TALENTED PEOPLE WE FORGET

When I was growing up, we had this really cool musician on my street (I'll call him Zack). He could play eight (8) instruments and for a time as a little kid he taught me guitar (don't get too excited, I'm only now returning to it). But this guy was a Genius. One of three adopted kiddos, he was primarily a bass player in area rock bands. I'd attend their rehearsals in basements and he eventually grew a beard, wore rimmed glasses and drove a VW bus. Of course, I must add here that he came home to bring his laundry on weekends and always with a striking different girlfriend. We kids drooled over the groupie chicks. I'm not exaggerating when I say he was a Genius. He could apply his high powered intellect to algorithms as he did to arpeggios on the guitar fret board. His apartment was a bit depressing with sound and mixing equipment combined with worn out furnishings in dank back building environments. I was the youngest person in my neighborhood ever to move away from home and never return. I was 19. So, I lost contact. I was so certain he'd eclipse Cat Stevens or James Taylor in popular music. The very last hint of information I heard about him was that he married a beautiful woman--a skater from "The Ice Capades". He was good at sports, quick with a sure-fired wit and evidently had some magnet to attract all those young girls we drooled over as neighborhood kids mesmerized sitting on our bicycles.

Have you lost touch with someone you've often wondered about in terms of what they did with their lives?