Edmund Burke was right

I doubt that 10-year-old Vinny Cohan would have hit me over the head with his plaster-casted arm if he'd known that I'd bring it up in conversation three decades later. Nor, I'll bet, would he have belched in my face at the Hall of Science in third grade after eating his salami sandwich.

"My son likes to belch," Vinny said sheepishly over drinks at Mr. Dennehy's, an Irish pub in the Village--a fitting place for a reunion of two Irish boys who grew up together in Brooklyn. "So of course I have to tell him that's not nice while...."

"While laughing inside," I said.

"Exactly."

The last time I'd seen Vinny was our graduation day from eighth grade, June 1976. He was off to Regis High School, I to Xaverian. After that we lost touch.

Vinny stumbled on a blog entry I wrote a few months back that mentioned his name. My blog has been a sort of Ouija board for egosurfers who find their names here. I've already gotten e-mails from two people whom I've casually mentioned (no lawsuits, thankfully). Of all the people who were a big part of my formative years, I've always been especially curious how things turned out with Vinny. So I was thrilled when I opened my e-mail last Saturday and found a message from him.

He is handsome and youthful looking and doesn't show the effects of being the father of two boys. His voice, which he exercises weekly as host of a radio show upstate, is calm and well-modulated, not the smart-alecky, high-pitched voice imprinted in my head from childhood. His eyes, as I find with most people (if they haven't had plastic surgery), were the dead giveaway. There was Vinny. We caught up on our current lives and reminisced about our boyhoods, especially the wild parties we went to in 7th and 8th grades, the ones where boys and girls paired off and played kissing games like Spin the Bottle and Post Office.

"I was dating Ann Bonfiglio at the time."

"Wait," I said. "You dated Ann Bonfiglio? So did I!"

It turned out that we had dated her months apart--and so had about four other boys. Not that it was of any consequence to any of us. Maybe one day she will egosurf and tell me how her life has turned out.

"I was thinking," said Vinny, "I wasn't much older than my son is now when I started kissing girls. Where were the parents?" he said half-jokingly, but only half.

I'd never considered before how young we were. If I had kids, I'd be worried too. And, yeah, where were the parents?

Vinny and I used to play with all the neighborhood kids at each other's houses. The two smartest boys in our class, we were both friends and rivals. We played a lot of hide-and-seek games, like Ringolevio and Manhunt, which involved large groups of kids. One day in the fourth grade, a Good Friday to be exact, while playing a game Vinny tumbled off the roof of a house on my block and landed on his elbow. We went to my parents' apartment to get some ice as his arm swelled up huge. It wasn't until he casually walked the 15 or so blocks to his own house that he discovered his arm was broken.

"The thing I remember about your mother that day," Vinny said, "is that she called my mother to apologize for letting me walk home with a broken arm." A week or so later in class, I made some sort of snide remark about Vinny, and he promptly hit me over the head with his cast just as the teacher walked in the room.

Our meeting tonight was especially timely and meaningful; the Catholic grammar school we attended in Flatbush is about to close its doors. Before catching up with Vinny, my only link to that time had been my friend Arlene, who lives right across the street from me. Arlene and I go back to third grade, but Vinny and I go back to first grade. Arlene once told me that I had given him a valentine in second grade. I honestly don't remember, but she swears it's true. Talk about foreshadowing.

It's funny the things you remember when faced with your past. As we talked, names and places I thought I'd long forgotten came flooding back to me. Puzzle pieces were put in place. Vinny remembered a BOAC bag I used to carry when my mother worked there, before it became British Airways. I remembered a silver down jacket he wore in third grade.

In school I was often teased for being so bookish and unathletic. One day outside school Vinny made a comment that I must have taken to heart. Arlene was talking about something someone did that sounded improbable, and Vinny quipped, "That's as ridiculous as Kieran boxing." At the time he was right. I wasn't a tough kid, and even though I'd had my share of fights growing up in Flatbush, boxing was the last thing anyone would ever have associated with me.

After an hour of talking with Vinny, it felt like I had seen him only 30 days ago instead of 30 years. Reunions can go either way, and sometimes when you meet people from your past you tend to act like you did when you last saw them--like the Banger Sisters. But 30 years is a long, long time, and I have no idea how I acted then (though Luis says I still act a lot like a 13-year-old girl). This reunion was a pleasant surprise, and I hope we meet up again soon.

Before tonight our paths could have crossed in any number of ways. We both work for financial services firms that share a common business entity. He used to live in Park Slope, only a few blocks from where Luis and I live now. When last we saw each other, hormones were just starting to make our voices crack, and our bodies had not yet been fleshed out. But it was all there in the eyes--the recognition, the fond remembrances, the memories of boys settled well into adulthood, now with responsibilities and families, hopes and dreams both fulfilled and dashed.

Edmund Burke was right: You can never plan the future by the past.