Dilate

"this other friend, i painted glow in the dark shapes on her black, steel toed, doc marten boots. a half moon on one boot. three stars on the other. four years later, the moon and the stars were still there. we hugged whenever we saw each other on campus and passed along our phone numbers as a yearly ritual. but we never once got together to talk. and now, our friendship has waned and i don't know what she does. or where she is. or what we used to talk about. or anything. but she gave me ani."
-April 2002-

Walking down the street the other day, just one block away from George's apartment, I ran into an old friend from college. Even though we were quite a distance apart, she recognized me while I kept staring at her in shocked, slowly dawning, recognition. As we approached, I heard her say to her companion, "We went to college together." Immediately, I grasped for memories about her and feared that I would say something totally weird. Mainly I was just so excited to see her, it's been nearly ten years, and she was one of those friends from college that I thought I'd lost forever. In the age of social networking sites, I guess it's not that uncommon to find long lost friends anymore but to actually see them just randomly standing on a street, it's overwhelming.

We didn't have much time to talk, aside from a few flubbered "Why are you here? How long? What are you up to?" before she and her husband had to catch the bus. For the next few minutes I was still totally out of it, as the memories dredged up washed over me and I reminisced about how important she was to my early freshman year experience. It's a feeling impossible (for me) to describe and I couldn't help wondering if we'd get to actually meet up and talk at some point.

There was a moment in there where I was so afraid that she had forgotten me, or forgotten my name, or something like that, and if she had stumbled introducing me, I might have been crushed. Instead, later in the day, she Facebooked me and now we're reconnected forever. I'm hoping to meet up with her when I get back and catch up then.

It's incredible when you think about the odds of such a thing happening. One friend, one corner, one bus to catch. If I wasn't headed to KFC at that very moment, I would have missed it all. The odds are incomprehensible but things like this happen so often (relatively) that everyone has stories like this. That's why sometimes I'm out and about and I swear I'm going to see someone I know, or I hope to see someone I'm missing.

In this case, I was thinking in my head, "Wow, I wonder if we'll see anyone we know right now." For kind of different reasons, true, but it's still somewhat magical and fate-like.

Also, I discovered that this long lost friend has the most awesome tattoo. Look at it, isn't it beautiful and original?