After class the other night, I walked with some friends through the rain and swampy humidity to the parking garage. My hair was doing unmentionable things, my shirt was wrinkled, and my pants and hiking boots were soaked, but despite looking homeless, I stood by my car to conclude a conversation about an upcoming midterm. As we stood there talking, a familiar-looking girl walked by and paused, obviously thinking that I too looked familiar.
I knew her name immediately: Alka Gupta. I remembered her distinctly as being the mousy, quiet girl who rode the same bus as me for the first two years of high school. She wasn’t exactly uncool; just willingly bound by rules imposed by overly conservative parents. At least that’s what I got from the times we spoke, which were rare because I was too busy trying to be the Malibu Barbie of the bus.
She began, “Did you go to TJ? I don’t remember your name…”
Didn’t remember my name? She was the nobody, I was the social butterfly, and yet I could recall her name instantly and she was drawing a complete blank?
“Lindsay,” I said. And to compensate for feeling insignificant, I added, “And yours…?”
She answered. I smiled and nodded, and then asked, gesturing back towards the Mason campus, “So do you go here?”
“Oh, no.” Laughter. “I’m just here teaching an MCAT course.”
My mistake. Here I thought that you also went to Mason, when in fact you’re actually here to teach students our age to ace a graduate school exam that you no doubt completed flawlessly less than a year ago.
“That’s awesome,” I stammered. “So did you just graduate? Where’d you go?”
“Yeah, I just finished at Hopkins. I’m starting med school this fall and just teaching this class with Kaplan until then. It’s just something to do, and it’s easy.”
“Wow, that’s great,” I mumbled. Then I crawled into a hole and died of ordinariness. If this is what all high school reunions will be like, take me off the mailing list. Or shoot me. I’m open to either possibility.