Living where I went to high school is strange sometimes. Every so often I run into someone from once upon a time. The encounter is usually the same: "You went to Woodson, right?" "Oh yeah, I think we had _______ together. What have you been up to?" "Not much, graduated from ________, worked at _______ for a while, decided that I was ready to get married/go back to school/get out of that area, now I'm here doing _______. What about you?" "About the same. Graduated from GT a couple years ago, been working at GD ever since, getting married in March." "Cool, cool, well, we should catch up some more, here's my card/number/email, get in touch, we'll have dinner or something." "Sounds good, here's my card/number/email as well. Catch you later." Said catching up never occurs. These are typically people I only knew peripherally, and the above conversation is bordering on the longest we've ever had. Every once in a while I bump into someone I knew a little better, but the conversations usually go much the same way and we go on with our lives never really thinking about the other person again.
Today I was at Best Buy and the girl at the register looked really familiar. This came as no immediate surprise since I frequently recognize the people who work at Best Buy as I'm in there generally once every 2 weeks. But her nametag said Emily and somewhere in the deep recesses of my rarely accessed memories, something started clicking. She was a friend of Alaina Blevins that I met at the Tibetan Freedom Concert and we flirted like crazy pretty much right from the get go, much to the annoyance of my friends who almost left me stranded at awful awful RFK Stadium as a result. We went out once after that, but there was really nothing there and so we went our separate ways even back then. I later found out she was pretty heavy into drugs, and looking back on that event of 10 years ago, I'm now fairly certain she was on then-very-popular ecstasy when we first met. Especially considering that when we had something very similar to the above conversation, she didn't really remember me. Now in fairness, if you'd asked me about her this morning, my response would have been a blank stare of befuddlement. Obviously, our date was even less memorable for her than it was for me. *shrug* No big loss there. We said goodbye and I fully expect to never see her or hear from her again.
Situations like these make me excited about my high school reunion. Two years from now I expect to have received another promotion at work (and/or likely changed jobs). Emily and I will be married. There's a good possibility I'll be a homeowner. It'll be fun to see some people I haven't seen in 10 years and find out how many inside jokes they remember and see if we were right about who wasn't going to amount to anything and who was going to take over the world. So far I've been right about everyone I've run into over the last few years. Not that I want to gloat about how great my life is (although is is pretty awesome), but I think it's interesting to see how little most people change from high school onwards. Bring it on 2009!
Today I was at Best Buy and the girl at the register looked really familiar. This came as no immediate surprise since I frequently recognize the people who work at Best Buy as I'm in there generally once every 2 weeks. But her nametag said Emily and somewhere in the deep recesses of my rarely accessed memories, something started clicking. She was a friend of Alaina Blevins that I met at the Tibetan Freedom Concert and we flirted like crazy pretty much right from the get go, much to the annoyance of my friends who almost left me stranded at awful awful RFK Stadium as a result. We went out once after that, but there was really nothing there and so we went our separate ways even back then. I later found out she was pretty heavy into drugs, and looking back on that event of 10 years ago, I'm now fairly certain she was on then-very-popular ecstasy when we first met. Especially considering that when we had something very similar to the above conversation, she didn't really remember me. Now in fairness, if you'd asked me about her this morning, my response would have been a blank stare of befuddlement. Obviously, our date was even less memorable for her than it was for me. *shrug* No big loss there. We said goodbye and I fully expect to never see her or hear from her again.
Situations like these make me excited about my high school reunion. Two years from now I expect to have received another promotion at work (and/or likely changed jobs). Emily and I will be married. There's a good possibility I'll be a homeowner. It'll be fun to see some people I haven't seen in 10 years and find out how many inside jokes they remember and see if we were right about who wasn't going to amount to anything and who was going to take over the world. So far I've been right about everyone I've run into over the last few years. Not that I want to gloat about how great my life is (although is is pretty awesome), but I think it's interesting to see how little most people change from high school onwards. Bring it on 2009!
