A few years ago I posted about getting the urge to look up a former workplace friend, Marshall, with whom I hadn't been in touch much, only to shockingly find out that he died a couple of months before.
Well last night I got that same urge to do an online search for my old, good friend Jeff. I've written about him in at least one of my FLASHBACKS. He's a Way Back Friend from an era long gone, the mid eighties.
I'd done searches for him before but came up, like a lot of my friends from those ancient times, bone dry. I have a feeling a chunk of folks in my age group kinda let the whole internet/social media culture pass them by. I guess that sub-set would be the first Luddite Generation.
I say first since, before my age group, you had to be an ultra-geek to be into computers. Think one-half generation older than me and you get the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They're oddballs for their generation.
But mine had, like I did, in our pre-teens, first the video game arcade craze, then the first gen home consoles, and eventually, widely available personal computers by the time we hit our college years.
Understandable for the Jobs/Gates generation to look at tech as alien or niche, when you had to freakin' build you're own computer and be able to program it too. But for my generation...the tech-disinterested saw what was available and chose to keep it at bay. And, presumably, that attitude prevailed for them as they got older and older and the tech became more and more ubiquitous but also marketed for, and adopted lovingly by, the younger generations.
So for these now middle-agers, they likely scorn, if not outright despise, electronic interconnectedness. They're the folks who fear banking online "because of hackers" and think anybody's personal information is prone to "identity theft." Well, those things can happen, yes, but most non-luddites know it's like the risk of getting injured or killed while riding in an automobile. It's rare enough to not let it overwhelm you with fear because the benefits are too important.
Anyway, I absolutely freakin' digress here...
Let's get back to Jeff.
First off, no, thankfully, he's not dead. But, in some ways, if what happened to him, happened to me, I might well wish I was dead.
A couple of years ago, according to multiple sources online and part of the public record, he got convicted of two counts of molestation/rape of a minor. His sentence was 2 concurrent sentences of...
5 years probation.
Here's his mug shot:
Of course, I have no idea of the circumstances other than my history with him. During that time, I have known he was a bit of a sexual deviant.
But I don't hold that against anyone.
Who am I to judge?
Jeff's got another three years to go in his probation. I wish him well.
I assume that his rather light sentence was likely attributed to a scenario as such: He met some young 17-year-old thang, at a gay bar. Hooked up with said Young Thang who was likely trying to snag himself a sugar daddy. Young Thang found out Jeff wasn't rich and dropped a dime on his ass.
Now Jeff has to be a registered sex offender for who knows how long.
He lives in a mobile home park in a suburban Massachusetts town.
Oh brother. I hope he can make the best of this cringy situation. He's a good man who doesn't deserve this.