Musical Missed Connections
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Missed Connections in Manhattan
The last time I saw you in person was in 1995, twenty years ago this spring, when we were in the fifth grade.
That summer, you moved away.
I’ve looked for you since, on the Friendsters and Myspaces and Facebooks of the world, but never very thoroughly, and without any success.
Once, I googled you, and found that you played in a bluegrass band.
I think that means fiddles.
You moved to the South, a resort community on the coast of the Carolinas.
When you lived in New York, your parents had a restaurant, or at least I think they did, because each year it was your mother who came into our classroom to teach us how to make gingerbread houses.
I heard a few years ago that she was held at gunpoint in the parking lot of a shopping mall, which made me sad in part because she was so beautiful and freckled, like you, all strawberry and orange and kind.
I don’t think I ever saw your father.
It’s possible that they got divorced, but I hope not.
Things you liked in 1991: professional hockey, Billy Joel, makes jokes.
I borrowed your Rangers hat, its adjustable sizing band held together with the kind of tape hockey players wrap around their sticks., and I still have it.
You left right before I understood about crushes, and boyfriends.
I think you would have been a good one.
We would have laughed at everything.
Let me know if you’d like your hat back, your name still written in your mother’s handwriting on the inside, clear as day.
One Year Ago: Missed Connection in Buffalo: Sarcastic Girl at Old Pink
Many years back, before the internet made searching for people so easy, I had a brief obsession concerning the whereabouts of a boy I had gone to school whom I hadn’t seen in a decade. During this period of wondering about his whereabouts, I met a guy who had previously worked in the store that the boy’s parents owned. Upon making this discovery, I bombarded the guy with questions about the boy and asked if I should visit the store and try to locate him. To my questions the guy responded, “Sometimes it better to keep the memories in your mind and not try to bring them into the present.” Which was probably a nice way of saying that the boy had turned into a total tool/toad/turd and I’d be gravely disappointed. Just remember poet, not everyone ages like a fine wine!