A Chance Encounter with My Six-Years-Younger Self

This blog is not meant to be, as so many blogs are, an all-purpose dumping ground for the banal occurrences of its author's personal life, and I do promise to keep the "hey, dear readers, here are four thousand words about the thing that happened to me at the DMV, I hope you like them"-type posts to a minimum. This blog is also not meant to be the place where I bare my soul and let my emotions run rampant over your computer screen. First and foremost, this is a forum for discourse on cultural, political, and social issues of current import, and I hope to maintain a high intellectual level on this site.

From time to time, though, you'll just have to deal with my prattling on about the thing that happened to me at the DMV (or, in this case, at the Sonic in Broomfield) if that thing seems sufficiently remarkable. You'll also occasionally have to deal with a post in which I turn the Emo Factor up to eleven. In the paragraphs that follow, you'll have to deal with both of those things. It's my blog, and I'll do what I wanna.

--Ed.

It's 2230h, and I'm westbound on the Turnpike, heading back to Boulder after yet another painful Rockies defeat, when my stomach makes a noise that is usually made only by humpback whales, pointedly reminding me that I haven't put anything in it for nine hours. I'm tired and sweaty and frustrated by the visions of Vance Fucking Worley's two-run double that I can't get out of my head, so I pull off the freeway and make for the nearest establishment that can provide me a large cheeseburger in less than three minutes.

Most of the tables in the small outdoor seating area are being occupied by a group of perhaps a dozen youths--high school students, by the looks of them--so I take a seat on the periphery a short distance away. The kids are loud and rambunctious and just generally acting age-appropriately, and so, being roughly eighty years old at heart, I'm about to shoot them all a sour look when I notice it. These kids look . . . odd. Most of them have lips that are too bright red to be real, or unnaturally even skin tone, or hair that doesn't move even when the wind blows, and some of them are wearing clothes that are quite clearly not suited for a bunch of teenagers going out on a Saturday night.

Something clicks in my mind; they are wearing stage makeup and costumes. Maybe they've just come from performing in a school play, but no, it's July, there probably aren't any school plays right now; maybe they've decided to fill their summer by filming a remake of a cult comedy or a mockumentary about zombies. In any case, they are young people who have chosen to spend many arduous hours honing a craft that eludes most of us, and for that they are spared my sour look.

But there is more, because one of them in particular seizes my attention. He is smaller and skinnier than most of the rest of them, and unlike them he wears neither costume nor t-shirt and shorts; instead, while sitting outside at a fast food restaurant on a warm Saturday night in July with his friends, he is wearing black slacks, black dress shoes, and a blue polo shirt that is noticeably too big for his slight frame. His dark brown hair lies flat against his scalp in a childlike half-dome; he is overdue for a haircut. It's clear that he's still well within the ruthless grasp of puberty, because single short, black hairs poke out from the skin of his face at all angles and irregular intervals, and the pitch of his voice soars and plummets however it pleases when he speaks. He may someday be a moderately attractive guy, but today is not that day. I am extremely confident that he is fifteen years old.

By eavesdropping on the conversation and stealing glances at this throng, I can tell a few other things about this young man. He is bright, and he means well, but he doesn't relate to the others as well as they relate to each other. He talks too loudly and frequently says something awkward or naive or unintentionally offensive. His jokes are funny only because the people to whom he tells them are teenagers on summer vacation. The others humor him to varying degrees; the extent to which any of them would be disappointed if he were to get up and leave is impossible to know. He seems to take the hint, and as the conversation wears on he talks less and less; at times it seems as if, even though he is physically at the table with the rest of them, his thoughts are light-years away.

I've finished my cheeseburger, so there's no reason for me to stay despite my surprisingly strong desire to do so. I get up from my table slowly, walk to the trash can slowly, and dispose of my refuse slowly, trying to catch the young man's eye even though I don't know what I'll do if I succeed. It doesn't matter, because his eyes are at all times fixed on a very pretty, very cheerful girl sitting across the table from him--except for those moments when he thinks she's about to look at him, when he shifts his gaze, with incredible speed, to a point of empty space nowhere near her.

I'm halfway to my car when somebody calls my name. Instinctively, I turn around, and the same young thespian who called my name calls it again, but he's not looking at me. He's looking at the kid in the too-big polo shirt with the bad haircut, whose name is apparently Tyler, who turns to him and says "What?"

I get back on the Turnpike, the visions of Vance Fucking Worley's double gone, replaced with visions of a kid I think I know very well, despite the fact that I will never meet him. I wonder if, for every single second of the time I was observing him, his stomach churned with the fear of committing some unforgivable faux pas. I wonder if he was constantly trying to figure out what to do with his hands, how quickly or slowly to eat and drink, which facial expressions to adopt at which times, and feeling like he was half a step behind. I wonder if, in those moments when his mind was wandering, he was trying to figure out what was wrong with him and how he could become as cool as his friends. I wonder if he'll ever work up the cojones to ask the girl across the table to see some shitty movie with him, and I hope like hell that, if he does, she says yes.

I wonder if, years from now, he'll reminisce bittersweetly about this night and hundreds of others like it, and ask himself how much of that awkward, gangly kid is still within him.