Trying To Make Things Right

I’m lousy at keeping in touch. I have lost contact with so many amazing people I went to Secondary School (High School) and College with and I hate that about myself. I can’t explain exactly why this happens or maybe I can. Its not that I don’t ever think or wonder about them, but something happens, or doesn’t happen between the thinking and wondering and the actual writing of an e-mail or making of a phone call. But having said that there are some people I have managed to stay in touch with. The die-hards. The ones that will never go away no matter how many weeks go past before I return an e-mail, text message or phone call. They know me well and as a result will not let me off the hook when it comes to the keeping in touch side of things. I love them for it.

One such friend is Sinead Galvin or just Galvin as we like to call her. Galvin and I have been friends since we were about 11 years old. She was a track athlete and I was a track athlete and we belonged to rival clubs. But somehow we both managed to bridge the competitive gaps that divided us and became good friends. She even ended up being maid-of-honor on my wedding day.

However, at this point I have to come clean on another negative thing about myself and that is my awful, awful memory when it comes to names and dates or basically anything to do with numbers. I have to hear it a million times before I will remember what time you said we were meeting at. I will not remember a phone number if you tell it to me, I must, must see it written down if I’m to have any shot at retaining it. I’m so bad that often I have to turn to Husband for assistance if someone asks me what my fastest time for a 200m or 300m is. Seriously, its that bad. And now everything is done with PIN’s and passwords and personal access codes, so you can imagine how ugly things get for me.

So even though we have been friends for all these years, I still, each and every year manage to forget Galvin’s birthday. On a good year, I’m just late. I’ll remember but I end up being a few days or weeks off the actual day. But for the most part, I just plain forget. And this year was no exception. But luckily, it was a good year. I was just late, 2 weeks late.

So in order to make it up to Galvin, I felt the need to go that extra mile in wishing her a Happy Birthday. So I dug deep into the creative part of my brain and decided that I would draw up a little sign that said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY GALVIN” and carry it around with me for a week, asking random people to hold it up and show their love and support for her special day.

Here are just a few of the people I managed to grab.


Some kids on the Marietta High School Track Team.

The wonderful Jen, Husband's assistant.

Husband himself. Fintan (the cat) is actually up there in the tree too.

Our new Intern, Gordy was planning to jump onto the Police motorcycle for this shot, but lost his nerve.

Me & some random fan at the Ice Hockey game.

Some kids at the Georgia Aquarium.

Front Desk staff at The Cheesecake Factory (it's a restaurant).

Our server, James at Flying Biscuit.