When I was 13, I met two of the most interesting people I have ever known.

We had moved from Ohio to Virginia earlier in the year, and I had been lost for the better part of eight months when I started high school in September. It's difficult to comprehend now how much difference there was between Dayton, Ohio, and Fairfax, Virginia, in 1963. I don't think I had ever heard anyone refer to the Civil War as anything but a historical event in Ohio, yet in Virginia it somehow mattered to people that I had just moved there from the North.

I don't think I'd had that many friends in Ohio, but starting high school a year younger than most of the other kids in the class -- I had skipped second grade -- and then being what Dave Barry would call "puberty challenged" left me feeling totally out of place. Couple that with the fact that I was totally uncomfortable in my own skin and didn't know what to do about it, and I was not a happy kid.

But the first week of high school introduced me to two fascinating people in my Freshman English class. Tracy Antley was a military brat, a girl who was intelligent, outspoken and funny. She wound up being the first really good female friend I ever had, although to my shame, I struggled with the idea of a girl as a friend in those days. Alan Singer was every bit as interesting, but what impressed me so much about him was that he seemed even more puberty challenged than I was, and he was short and not at all athletic, yet was totally comfortable with what he was. Which was smart and funny, with a stinging wit.

I seem to remember him being in our school only for one year, although it might have been two. His picture isn't in our sophomore yearbook. Tracy was with us for three years until her father was transferred after our 11th grade year.

I lost touch with both of them. Ironically, I later learned that Tracy spent her first two years of college at Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., a school I visited numerous times for dates during the three semesters I spent at the University of Virginia.

Of Alan, I had no clue.

But as one turned to another, and barely pubescent kids became middle-aged and then older, I learned some things. It didn't surprise me much to learn that Tracy and Alan had married, and it surprised me just as little to learn that they had divorced. Tracy had become an attorney, and Alan a writer and an English professor. She lives on one coast, he on another. He has published numerous books, none of which have been touted by Oprah, made into a movie or found an audience among folks who read Tom Clancy, Stephen King or Nora Roberts.

[caption id="attachment_1099" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Alan Singer"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/singer.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-1099" title="singer" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/singer-150x123.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="123" /></a>[/caption]

It's a pretty safe bet that none of those things were goals of his when he wrote the books. Tracy told me that Alan was the only person she knew who completely understood "Finnegan's Wake" the first time he read it.

I ordered two of his books through Amazon. "The Charnel Imp" has been sitting on my bookshelf for six or eight months. It's not a long book, but for some reason, I find myself intimidated by it. It contains possibly the most <em>dense</em> prose I have ever seen, and I don't mean dense in a negative way. Wading through the first page or two leaves me feeling like I'm chopping my way through a rain forest with a dull machete.

Just this week, I got his first novel, "The Ox-Breadth," from a used bookseller in Philadelphia. I haven't read it yet, even though it's only 129 pages long. I did glance fondly at the dedication page.

<em>For Tracy.</em>

<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/charnel.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1100" title="charnel" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/charnel-194x300.jpg" alt="" width="194" height="300" /></a>That made me smile.

I found his e-mail address on his university's Website, and after I read the two books, I think I will send him an e-mail and tell him what I think of them.

I'm not sure he'll remember me. As I said, our lives touched for just one year. But I do think when you come across someone you knew as a child who accomplished something, you ought to let them know you noticed.

I also promised Tracy I would let her know what I thought.

So I guess I had better put down Tom Clancy, Stephen King and Nora Roberts and tackle his books.

Actually, I don't think I've ever read Nora Roberts.

I'm more of a Danielle Steel fan.