I was thinking the other day about my best buddy, Scott. I met Scott in the Army in 1989 and we’ve been best friends almost ever since. If you had asked me, in my circle of friends, in about, say, 1991 which of us was going to be the most professionally successful I never would have guessed Scott, and probably nobody else - including Scott himself - would have guessed him. He’d dropped out of community college, tried to get into university as a mature student and gave up during the test course. He seemed doomed to a life as a grunt. He was about as successful with the ladies back then as the L.A. Clippers are with winning NBA championships. Pretty smart, but not so smart that he could coast on overwhelming intellect; the kind of guy who’d probably score 115, 120 on a properly administered IQ test. He was a great guy but going nowhere.
Today he’s a director or something like that for one of the biggest tech firms on the planet. He makes more in a year than I make in three, and I make very good money, so that’s saying something. He’s married to a beautiful, wonderful young woman. His problems with self confidence and pessimism are long behind him. He just completely turned his life around, entirely on his own.
On the other hand, in our circle of friends was this other guy, who I’ll call Dave, who was one of the smartest human beings I have ever known, if not THE smartest. He was going to one of Canada’s finest universities. He was a hard worker. For some reason, he never graduated. He drifted away.
As I started racking up contacts in Facebook, I noticed the same thing over and over. If I had recorded my predictions on how people’s lives would turn out I would have been about as accurate as just rolling dice to determine outcomes from random chance. This one guy was the most nerdy, stupid, ugly goofball you could imagine; he’s married now, two kids, owns a garage. This one girl I knew was gorgeous, popular, and as bright as you could ask; her command of English was astounding - I still remember a poem she wrote, and marvelling that a person could write so magnificently, wondering how it was possible. Her life seems to have kind of stalled, and she’s single. I can’t even tell if she has a job. Her two best friends are single too, mid-30s, and I don’t understand why, they’re all hot and nice people.
This one girl, I stood for her at her wedding. I’ve never seen a more perfect couple. Their marriage collapsed eight years later. My sister used to date this absolutely hopeless loser - we called him Pizza Boy - who was ugly and, frankly, pretty stupid, and he went back to college, got a good job, and is married and successful. I knew this guy in high school who was really smart, knew more about computers than my buddy who I first described; he’s never really accomplished much in life.
I knoew this other girl in school. I am telling you here and now I have never in my life seen a more naturally talented actor; and I’m someone who’s watched a great many productions and knows his way around a stage. This girl was astounding. Her talent was almost blinding; she could have waltzed through a successful life as an actress. After high school she never acted in a single thing again. She’s successful, but not the way I expected.
Then there was this other guy. He was a complete goofball who barely passed everything, did nothing, and had the motivation of a slug. He had stoner loser written all over him. Today he’s a successful technician in the television biz. He was a wife and a lovely new daughter.
Some people did what I figured they’d do - but to be honest, just as many are so dramatically far from what I would have expected that I must conclude, from my anecdotal evidence, that it is flatly impossible to tell a person’s future from what they’re like when they’re 18.
Do you notice the same thing?
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However, I am a bit surprised about who turned out to be gay, and I find myself wishing I’d been closer to some of them. Maybe a good friend would have helped. I’m glad to see that so many of them have worked things out by now.