Goines On: Old classmates

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Goines received an email about another high school classmate who had passed on. In responding, he confused the deceased, whose name was Cliff, with another classmate whose face he was remembering. He realized this before he sent the email and even came up with the approximate name of the other one, Richard something. Another classmate on the email list told him who the Richard was – someone whose father had worked for her father.
    Goines wrote to her privately to tell her that he remembered Richard with affection, although he couldn’t remember ever visiting in his home or meeting his family. But he was able to write her, “I remember you better, your red hair, your seriousness, your resoluteness.” Her reply surprised Goines.
    She wrote back, “Thanks for your reply. You were nice to say I was serious, but seriously, if you knew me better, actually I was not serious about anything...except intent on having fun. I was a mischievous, introverted, crazy redhead during those school years. I’m sorry I didn’t know you better. You were friendly, but because you were also very bright, you were kind of scary to me. And because I was a quiet person, you probably mistook me as being more serious than I actually was. Though quiet, my brain was probably thinking up mischievous stuff to do to have fun later.”

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