A long, long time ago, I signed up to attend a UCLA function that had just started. They called it “Dinner with Six Strangers.” I recently graduated from the university, and wanted to continue associating with them. My girlfriend then was lukewarm on the idea, but we signed up.
At the last minute she bailed. I wasn’t going without her, so I dropped it. She had not finished college, and I think she was intimidated by the prospect of having dinner with people who might have gone to UCLA with her former husband. Later, schizophrenia overcame him and he dropped out of college, and their marriage fell apart. I never asked her about her reason for not wanting to go. I was young.
UCLA revived the program as “Dinner with 12 Strangers,” and it continues after 53 years. I get invitations to it, but for one reason or another have ignored them. This year another invitation came. I thought about ignoring it as usual, but earlier today I delivered a one-hour unscripted talk to a group of forty strangers about the “10 warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease.” Suddenly the idea of a dinner with 12 strangers seemed like fun.
My 1967 self probably wouldn’t recognize me today. Months ago, I posted a quote from The Sheltering Sky: “How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
I look at the family photomontage my parents had in their room at an assisted living facility. They were there because they had Alzheimer’s. I realized all the people in that montage, except for me and my brother, are dead. Gone.
How much time should I wait to try this? Not long. So I think I’ll sign up. And this time, my partner is likely to go along with me, another good reason I’m with her.
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