Blast from the past.

At lunch today, I was sitting at a stop light when I noticed the car in front of me. A bright yellow Ford Ranger with light covers. I immediately thought LAME, because I am a snob. But then I thought, wait a second. I’ve seen this truck before. Maybe not the exact truck, but one eerily similar. Driven by a guy a dated in high school. I met Ryan the summer before my senior year. He was the brother of my friend’s boyfriend. We were the same age and had been in the same class for years, but had never met. We’d all been swimming at my friend’s house, and as they were leaving he asked for my phone number. I was thrilled. I gave it to him. He called that night, and we talked for hours, in that way high school kids do. I remember really enjoying myself – it was fun to talk to someone who’d been in the same place and knew all the same people, but had had such a different experience than I had. After that, we were dating. We spent a fair amount of time together, swimming and going to movies and baseball games and such. He would pick me up in his white Ford Ranger with the light covers, and off we’d go. Whenever we got to our destination, he would take the light covers off and put them in the cab so they wouldn’t get stolen. I didn’t really understand the point of them, and it annoyed me to have to wait for him to take them off (and put them back on) every time we got in and out of the car, but it wasn’t a big deal. What was a big deal, however, was how we had NOTHING to say to each other. We said everything there was to say during that first phone call. We would literally sit on the phone, not talking. Sit at the table, not talking. Movies became our saving grace. After a couple of weeks of silence, he called me. Ryan: I think maybe we shouldn’t date anymore. Brandi: OH MY GOSH, me too. Ryan: Really? Brandi: YES. We ran out of things to say two weeks ago. Ryan: I KNOW! Okay, good. So no more dating. Brandi: No. Ryan: Awesome. Brandi: Yes. To borrow from Seinfeld, it was the world’s first truly mutual breakup. When school started again, we ended up in the same English class. We were friendly, but we had some kind of unspoken agreement to pretend like the summer had never happened. One day, our assignment had been to bring in a poem to read to the class. After that was done, we played I Never. (We had one of those teachers who wanted to be cool.) One guy got up, took a slow turn around the circle, then said, “I have never kissed anyone in this room.” I looked around the room, wondering if anyone had kissed anyone else, when my eyes landed on Ryan. My friend Melanie was elbowing me and laughing. I had completely forgotten we had even dated by this point. I looked at him, he looked at me, and we both shook our heads. Crisis averted. I heard he married a girl that lived down the street from me, and I hope they are happy and doing well. It’s funny that I thought of him today, as there is an off chance he might be at the wedding on Saturday. I wonder if he remembers any of that, and if makes his wife wait for him to cover and uncover the lights on the truck every time they leave the house. I hope not.