High School Friends: Rad, Part 3

I have spent the last two days discussing my experience with my friend Rad from high school. Today, I'll wrap it up.

I'm going to start this part telling you about a crush I had a little later on in life. My junior year in college, I was in the student Senate. There was this girl I met there. (Sadly, I cannot remember her name, not even enough to do my little "z" trick.) She was very attractive with olive skin and dark hair. She was smart and well-dressed, but her pants were always baggy. I almost made the comment that she shouldn't wear pants like that because they made her hips look big. Well, I'm glad I never said that because I found out that she actually had big hips when I saw her wearing a skirt for the first time.

One day, I saw Rad in the passenger seat of a car that was on campus. He yelled out at me and I got into the car. That girl was in the car with him and they were holding hands. They were dating! I have no idea how he met her, but this was one of the few times our taste in women had converged. However, I knew that even if they broke up, I couldn't go out with her.

After graduating from college, I worked as DJ at a radio station in Clovis, NM. One night in 1988, Rad came to my house. He found me by going to the radio station and having them call me. I gave him the address and he showed up a few minutes later. He was also working as a DJ at a radio station in Hobbs, NM. I felt kind of bad because, even though I was the Music Director, I was stuck on the overnight shift. He was his station's Program Director and appeared to be having a blast. We ran around town that night and he met the girl I was dating at the time. (Her name is Maz, but I'll get to her much later.)

We talked a few times on the phone after that, and since we were both in charge of the music at our stations, we were both listed as the person calling in the latest chart activity on the hits at our stations for the Gavin Report. After I had quit working at the station because they didn't let me move into an earlier shift, I called him to see if he had any jobs available. I didn't flat out ask, but he didn't make any indication that he had anything to offer me.

I wouldn't hear from him again for almost 24 years. In an earlier post, I mentioned how my best friend Wild from fourth grade had tracked me down by calling my father. A few days after that, I received an e-mail at my work place. It was from Rad. He had just been thinking about me and decided to look me up on the Internet. He found me on the website for the radio station where I worked. I guess he couldn't tell from the picture, but he wasn't quite sure if I was the same Fayd Ogolon that he knew in high school.

He had become an actor of sorts, had appeared in some stuff (that I had never seen) and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild. He had recently gotten married for the first time and lived in Hawaii. We became friends on Facebook and have been keeping tabs on each other. His wife recently became an attorney.

I don't know if we'll ever see each other again. I don't have the money to go to Hawaii, and apparently, he doesn't have the money to leave Hawaii. He and his wife's most recent vacation was in the parts of that state in which they don't live.