Never lasts – sometimes it never lasts sooner than you expected. But it still never lasts.
It’s 2002 – you’re smack in the middle of your 20th high school reunion. You didn’t want to go but you had this nagging suspicion the love of your life was going to show up. You thought maybe . . .
You were hoping time stood still and 1982 didn’t move – you were hoping you’d see each other and time didn’t skip a beat. You were hoping you’d pick up where you left off and time would evaporate.
Time moved quickly to a crazy rhythm and it was moving without you.
Three Cabernet’s and an ocean of pleasantries later, she finally arrived, standing at the entrance – surveying the wave of nostalgia, furrowing an eyebrow.
Nothing about her changed since high school – it was 1982 all over again.
Your eyes meet – hers look right past you.
You swore up and down it was all the cigarette smoke so you ambled over to where she was and stood face to face.
Your broad smile was met with her blank question mark. You point to your name tag – she peers – she squints – she studies – doesn’t register.
You’re not giving up – you follow her to the no-host bar and watch her order a double-Screwdriver. You try again to refresh her memory.
She looks at you the same way a brick wall looks at a German Shepherd. She gulps her drink and feigns an arms-distant smile – the kind you would hand your Dentist after the novocaine wore off.
You’re incredulous – you run through a litany of names, places, mutual friends and sleepless nights.
Clearly, you’re getting on her nerves. Clearly, she’s taken a sledgehammer to your fondest dreams.
Shrugs her shoulders, shakes her head and politely disappears into the crowd.
Later, after you’ve consumed the better part of an Almaden vineyard, you make contact with mutual friends – you are reminded she “just wasn’t that into you” and proceed to change the subject – Prince and Bruce Springsteen become favorite topics – nobody seems to care what anybody else does, you’re too busy being mortified to add anything to the animated and escalating conversations.
You leave. On your way out the door someone hands you a cassette – KLOS: April 1982 – one of your classmates was an avid taper of radio. He hands cassettes out as party favors – maybe some nostalgia about 1982 . . .
So much for the high school reunion – so much for time standing still. You come to the reality you made no difference – at least not to the one that mattered most.
The one you came to see – the one you had massive hopes for – the one you never forgot.
Of course, it didn’t help that you went bald by the time college came around – put on 40 pounds in the interim – broke your nose twice – left all your teeth in the dashboard of a Toyota and dentures do weird things to your face, and you also traded in your glasses for contact lenses.
No – but then, if you didn’t have one of the most overworked imaginations on the planet, you would instantly realize you never actually met her – spoke to her once, by way of excusing yourself when you bumped into her. In all honesty; she wouldn’t know you if you fell over her.
It’s that imagination of yours. And you think about that as you pop the cassette into your player and KLOS from 1982 comes out of your speakers.
