The Fifth Wheel

I spoke about my 4 friends in a post titled Friendships!, on April 22, 2014.

In the last 9-10 years, we have been communicating on an almost daily basis, and 3 years ago, we decided to have a reunion. It felt incredibly unbelievable as the 5 of us hadn’t been together since August 1995.

For the reunion, we were supposed to gather in this city, in the motherland, on July 1, 2023. Due to an airline issue, I reached last on July 4^th. It felt like “first to leave and last to arrive”. I left in 1992 and the 4 friends of mine left one by one afterwards, until only one remained in the motherland. It was great to see them. Yet, I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like the fifth wheel. The 4 of them had this synergy that took them back to their youth and they reminisced of that time together. I wasn’t sure how I fit into this dynamic. Would I have felt in sync with them if I had arrived on time?!

Feeling like a fifth wheel took me back in time to 1993 when I met my first friend in Canada. She was my only friend for a few months. It was with her that I visited Fifth Wheel for the first time - it was a truck stop that served bottomless coffees and other delights. Mandy’s dad lived in Kingston and Fifth Wheel was on the way to his home. I only went to this funky restaurant with Mandy.

Maybe being a fifth wheel isn’t so bad. I decided to investigate why that truck stop was named such and found out right away that that truck stop and others named the same have been closed since September 2015. The investigation also took me down history lane to old horse-drawn carriages in the 1800s which had a fifth wheel. I won’t go into details here; however, I didn’t feel so bad calling myself the fifth wheel after my research.

I still feel bad that those truck stops don’t exist anymore. But I will never forget the time I spent at the Fifth Wheel with my first friend in Canada. She made me feel like I belonged in this beautiful country. After 30 years, I felt like a misfit in the motherland. I also realized that land is just land. It is our connections with people that make it home.

The never-ending Streaming

I wrote about The Blacklist on May 20,2020. I don’t know what I was thinking then, but I wrote Blacklist as “Black List” (I have fixed that since then!). It was a few days prior to that post that I watched the season 7 finale. After 3 years and a few weeks later, I am watching season 8 on Netflix. I did not think I could ever continue to watch from where I left off. I was so used to watching shows/series on network television. Now, all 9 seasons of The Blacklist can be watched within a few days if I chose to binge my way through them!

Streaming has changed the way people watch shows/series. I am not sure if it is good or bad. For me, I believe I that it hasn’t been so good. Some weekends have gone into watching 10 hours of a show that was dropped on a Friday. Sometimes that leads to ordering food on demand, and which eventually leads to me becoming the classic couch potato. But does this make me think twice when the next set of 10 episodes are dropped on a well-planned Friday? Nope!

I am not even sure why I am taking the time to write about streaming and the unfortunate effect it has had on my life?! I believe I am just happy that I am writing again, and the content is secondary at this point in time.