Paper Footballs

When I got on the packed commuter train, I almost didn’t see him. He looked like an adult man (because technically, he was) so it took me a second to recognize the goofy kid I knew from high school. We had enough overlapping friends that he’s still a staple in my decades-old memories. 

He would sit across from me in the library and fold a paper football that he would flick over to the other table. We would throw that little paper football a lot, just to pass the time. I think he was good at math - were we in the same math class? He was openly flirtatious, which meant a lot to the very insecure 16 year-old me. 

On the train, we did that thing where we casually looked at each other but then our eyes widened like, hey wait a minute, I know you!

We got seats facing each other, just like in the library. I was wearing an old cardigan and my hair was in a low ponytail. I felt dowdy and exhausted from teaching all day. He looked like the wolf of wall street. He was in a pinstripe suit and - I kid you not - suspenders. His hair was slicked back.

We didn’t mention our jobs. We could have been teenagers again, just hanging out and talking about nothing. It would have felt right if he had started making a paper football right there on his knee.

He asked me if I had a boyfriend and looked visibly disappointed when I said I did. It made me laugh, though nothing about it was awkward, just his usual flirting even after all these years.

My mom said that when someone knows you when you’re a teenager, they just know you. They know you before you’re anyone’s mom or wife or coworker, you’re just you. This didn’t make sense to me when I was an angsty teen but I understand a little more now.

When we got to his stop, it was a quick goodbye. He was late for therapy, he told me. We didn’t lie about hanging out sometime, just see you around. I texted my best friend, You’ll never guess who I just saw! and I settled in to be on my own for the rest of the trip. 

Scott died a few years later. I found out on Instagram. Now I am the only one in the world who has that memory from the train. I wonder if he told anyone that he ran into me that day. Did he mention that I looked like a frumpy teacher? In the same way I laughed about his suspenders when I retold the story to my friends? I almost didn’t recognize him because he was a grown up. Did I look like an anonymous grown up to him too?

There are parts of that train ride that are harder for me to tell. Like, that he had been drinking. Maybe the conversation was easy because it came after a few beers. We daydreamed about our hopes for the future. I just want to be really rich, he had said, and have a hot wife. And then what? I asked. What do you mean? He said he hadn’t thought about that.

We didn’t have inside jokes or anything to really link us other than the shared backdrop of high school. But that was enough to relax and share a few stops with someone who remembered when. We were each other’s background characters, folded into scenes that we were the stars of. The random moment on the train was just a side plot we each wrapped within our own story.

The school still has a library but it’s not the one Scott and I remember. It’s been updated with new paint and furniture and technology and anonymous teenagers. I wonder if they play with a paper footballs to pass the time.