December 27, 2015 Sunday Afternoon Last night, I met a stranger in the park. I'd been walking back from the store down my usual path when I saw someone sitting at one of the park benches. The man was reading a letter. It'd been a long time since I'd seen anyone reading a handwritten letter. I can't remember the last time I had written or received one myself. Curious, I approached him about it. He must have thought I was odd, especially with as late as it was. Still, he was rather friendly about it. The letter was from his girlfriend, who was studying abroad in England. We got to talking about the old days, when things were simpler, when we had more time. These days, everything needs to be instant. If you don't answer a text fast enough, people start to think something's wrong. It's really silly, when I think about it. When I was a kid, I'd go down to the park by myself and play for hours and my friends didn't think I was ignoring them if I didn't answer their phone calls right away. Ah, of course, those were not the safest of days either... I don't think I'd really want to go back to how things were then. There's a lot I enjoy about now. Still, the thought was nice for a moment. Maybe I'm just nostalgic. I exchanged contact info with the stranger. You wouldn't believe it, but he doesn't have a cell phone or an e-mail address. Yes, he really doesn't. When I got home last night, I got a call from him. We talked some more about old stuff, movies and dumb songs. His phone kept cutting out when we were ranting on about newer movies. A storm was coming through his area. At some point, the phone got disconnected. I tried calling him back, but I couldn't get through to him. Anyway, eventually, he got back to me and we talked for way too long after that. I ended up waking up late because of it. Fortunately, today's one of my off days. I know what you're thinking. I shouldn't be giving out my info like that! I know, I know. But, I feel like I can trust him. We're going to be exchanging letters. So, now I have two pen pals! It's going to be weird waiting for days to get replies, especially since we're talking on the phone too. Heh, but we used to do that, didn't we? Our conversations in our letters never had anything to do with what we talked about at school or on the phone. You know, this is going to sound really strange, but I feel like I've met that man before. Something about his face was familiar. I can't place where. Like I've seen him in a newspaper or something. But that can't be. I haven't read the newspaper since I was a kid. I don't know. I've probably seen him around town before or something. Anyway, that's been my last twenty-four hours. How have you been?