if there’s one event that I dread attending more than any other, it’s the good ol’ high school reunion. I just ‘know’ that I’m one of those guys, the one that told everyone he was going to by such and such time I was going to be so amazing and great, only to have done exactly fuck since high school. I spent about a year in a band that didn’t go anywhere because we were all too busy enjoying the music we heard instead of creating the music that we ‘were’. I know, it’s a damned cheese fest, but it’s mine.
Enough with the rambling. So, I was going through my normal routine at work, cleaning up the store in preparation for whoever was coming tomorrow. As I was rounding an aisle, about to start straightening up an endcap that some asshole decided he could destroy, a customer came around at the same time and nearly ran into me with her shopping car. I grinned like I was trained to and bared my crooked teeth and she did the same. As I was giving her the company slogan of; “Can I help you find your stuff?” I remember her.
You know those girls in high school that nerds like us (I’m assuming you are) can’t seem to get close to without completely losing our balls? Yeah well, she wasn't quite there but she was in a clique that was friends with someone from that clique. Anyway, before she could walk off, I continued to grin like an idiot, mostly because I was filled with a mixture of two different emotions; excitement and dread.
“Oh my god” she said, “How are you?” It’s weird, if I was asked that question by anyone else, I’d say great. I have two wonderful future step-children, a family that loves me, and best of all; I’m alive. The difference is that, this is a person that I haven’t spoke to in about ten years. Even when we were in high school I think we may have said a handful of words to each other. I had to come up with something that I had done since then to make me sound like a semi-regular human being. Hmm....Blank.
Literally every moment of my life flashed before my eyes like a man caught on a ledge with no way out. Strangely, when I was in high school I would have lied my way out to make myself sound better than I actually was.
“I’m here....” I said, arms indicating my humble retail store surroundings. Bless her I thought, she just smiled and shrugged her shoulders without making any signals that my career was probably a hell of a lot worse than hers at this point. Reciprocating the question, I asked “What have you been up to since high school?”
“I teach children now.” she said.
“That is just awesome” I say, fully drowning myself in the knowledge that I am a failure in my professional life. I didn’t matter that I was finally trying to get one of my short stories published and, to that effect, actually finishing stories, because I haven’t done it yet, I feel like total shit. We say goodbye and she goes on to leave the headache inducing fluorescent lighting behind her while I continue fixing up that shitty end cap that some shitty customer decided to leave looking like shit.
For the rest of my shift I continued to think about friends and just people that I were friends with in highschool. Would I still be friends with them today? Or would we have changed so much that being friends would be impossible? I know that I’ve done worse than a lot of my peers, but have I done any better? I know that at least one of those bits of that conversation is going to make it into a story a one point or another.
How about that? Ever see anyone that you couldn’t stand in high school that you know you could talk to now with ease? Any friends that are now enemies? Leave me a comment below. Until next time star gazers.
No comments:
Post a Comment