Reacquaintance

Today I had lunch with an old friend, a person with whom I was close during the most awkward time of my life. And despite not having seen one another for the past half of our lives, we fell in like we did when we were 13.

As a kid he was always overgrown for his age, a bit oafish. He seemed to relish attention of any kind, even if he had earned it with clumsiness or feigned stupidity. In fact he was pretty smart but never betrayed it, and his grades and interest in school lagged as it became more competitive.

It was a shock to see him for the first time as a normal-sized person. I expected him to tower above me like he had in the ninth grade, a man-child extrapolated. But he stood before me, only an inch taller than I am, his features better defined than in his doughy youth. His speaking voice was mostly unchanged. He still spoke forcefully, from the back of his throat, bludgeoning words with a thick Michigan accent he inherited from his father.

A teenager from a well-to-do family, he was bold and crude and constantly on the prowl for small-time mischief. Nothing too damaging, but troubling enough that I had begun to distance myself from him in the year before his family suddenly sold their house and resettled on the opposite coast. The brashness was still there today, albeit channeled to a more productive outlet. He’s got ambitious goals for a business that’s still just an idea at this point, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see him achieve them.

He came armed with a barrage of questions about my family (which he remembered with striking clarity), my current job, old acquaintances, and people whose names I hadn’t conjured in more than a decade. It is actually very encouraging to know that there are people like him: people who never fully lose touch, who even after maturing and moving on to adult life, still seek out the people and the context amid which they grew up.