New Year, Happy or Not

At the last minute we went out to dinner, the early seating, with old friends. I sat next to a woman I have known for maybe eight or ten years but is a friend of a friend so we have had many conversations but never anything too in-depth. Mostly we talk about pets and art work we are doing. She makes lovely Nantucket baskets and has them lined in wonderful soft leather that I always admire.

So last night someone else mentioned she is a twin and many of us were surprised this has never come up. Later on she said something about growing up in Norwood, MA and my ears perked up- that is where I had my first teaching job at the high school over thirty years ago so I announced that Karen was probably an old student of mine as a joke- and we started talking and sure enough, SHE WAS! She was in the advanced art classes, always hanging around the art rooms and of course I remembered her once I knew who she was! She told me that she has had the biggest feeling she knew me too, thought I was maybe a patient at the dentist office she had worked at.

Damn, I wish people would wear a resume on their backs so we could make these connections more easily! It makes it really obvious how many of these connections go unacknowledged. Once we got talking I started remembering names and things about the school and teachers like I was there last year, things I had long forgotten.

I told her about a kid who had stolen a checkbook and then endorsed the checks with his real name, told her about the day a kid was hauled out of class by the police to open his car in the parking lot- it contained articles and televisions collected on the housebreaks he did on his free periods, told her about a girl I couldn't figure out because she never had the same clothes on twice, told her about a student who was obviously gay but not out that I ran into in Provincetown one weekend much to his embarrassment so we both pretended it didn't happen (I couldn't remember his name), told her about the kid named 'Rat' that I always worried about, and a cashier at Barnes and Noble who recognized me years after he had graduated but I could barely remember.

In short, we were huddled together for the whole evening tracing our steps. When I started teaching I was about 27, only 10 years older than the students. At the time it seemed like plenty of distance, but looking back it was hard to not get involved in the daily dramas because they were so identifiable, so close to what I had recently been involved in. Very strange.