When you reach a certain point in your life, the world stops giving you things and starts taking them away.

In the last couple of years, I have gotten several rude surprises in the form of bad news about former friends and colleagues. In April 2009, my former roommate David Poole of the Charlotte Observer died at age 50. I hadn't seen him for more than 25 years, but he had been morbidly obese when I knew him and I don't think that had changed. The bad news in that case was a surprise but hardly a shock.

[caption id="attachment_1770" align="alignleft" width="280" caption="Andrew Cseplo, upper right"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/559458_4576933263050_1583489405_n.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1770" title="559458_4576933263050_1583489405_n" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/559458_4576933263050_1583489405_n.jpg" alt="" width="280" height="254" /></a>[/caption]

The news I got this morning was truly a shock. My friend Andrew Cseplo, who preceded me as editor in chief of the campus newspaper at George Mason University, was found dead in his cab Thursday night at 13th and Constitution in Washington, D.C. Emergency medical technicians tried to revive him, but were unable. It looks like he had a heart attack, which came as a shock to the friends who actually see him from time to time.

He was 53, and at least during the last two years on Facebook, he seemed to be having a really good time. He had one of the best senses of humor I have ever seen; I would have thought he might have been able to make it as a stand-up comic.

And now he's gone. It is depressing to lose a friend, but it is especially depressing when the friends you lose are younger than you are.

I have been blessed in my life. I had three grandparents alive till I was 35 years old, and I was 58 before I lost one of my parents. I have only lost one relative -- a cousin -- at a shockingly young age, but he had a medical condition that made it certain he wasn't going to make it past adolescence.

It's strange, though. Relationships end all the time, and some end with a finality that resembles death. For five years or so, I was closer to my first wife than I had ever been to anyone else. But we split up in 1980 and haven't seen or spoken to each other in more than 30 years. We might as well be dead to each other.

Still, for all the friends and relatives we lose along the way, occasionally they come back. Some years back, I was able to re-establish contact with my friend Walter Masterson. We stayed in touch for the last three or four years of his life. When he died at age 87, our renewed friendship had made both our lives more pleasant.

[caption id="attachment_1771" align="alignright" width="130" caption="Billie Johnson"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/211651_100000130070627_618590210_n.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1771" title="211651_100000130070627_618590210_n" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/211651_100000130070627_618590210_n-130x300.jpg" alt="" width="130" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

Friday on Facebook, I got a pleasant surprise. A woman that I knew for only one year -- my senior year in high school -- sent me a message. Billie Johnson was my government teacher in 12th grade, one of the two or three finest teachers I had in my many years getting educated.

She taught government at my high school until she retired in 1994, and she is still actively working for teachers -- both active and retired -- to protect their rights. In a challenging time when the far right seems to see teachers as the villains for everything that's wrong with our country, it's important for people to stand up and say no to them.

It made me very happy to hear from her. I have never forgotten something she said to me at the end of 12th grade. She apologized to me for not being able to make the class more interesting. She said she knew I would have benefitted from a more advanced class, but government was a required subject for every high school senior in Virginia. She had to teach a class that would get as many kids through as possible.

Her apology embarrassed me. Sure, what she said was true, but I hadn't even gotten an "A" in the class. I didn't think I had the right to a more challenging class.

Good teachers are like that, and she was one of the best. It's strange to go from a teacher-student relationship to a friendship between two retired adults.

It's kind of nice, though.

Not all the surprises we get at this point in life are bad ones.

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;