Seed of Memory

While the world keeps getting smaller with the more people that we meet, I'm fairly convinced that our memories shrink even faster the older we get.

I mean, we meet people, we lose touch and then forget them. And every once in a while, we meet those people again, through chance, luck, fate--whatever you wanna call it. Sometimes, when we encounter these people again, we tend to crystallize who they were in our memories and we make the unfortunate mistake of forgetting that, in their minds, they've never been a past tense. Life has never stopped for them. In their minds, they've always been an are...not a were.

Then there's the sad case of bumping into someone you used to know and one of you has no clue who the hell the other person is. Luckily for me, I've never had that problem. Sure, sometimes, I don't always get the details (I have problems remembering names) right, but I'm good at knowing the essentials: Who they were, what they meant to me--good or bad.

It's always been one of my greatest fears that people forget about me. I mean, we're given this life, this miracle, and it is our jobs to make a mark; not necessarily even career-wise or being newsworthy, but just making an impression, giving people a memory of us to pass on. The last thing I'd want in this world would be for someone to just shrug me off, as if what I said or did had no bearing on their live. When I die, I want it to matter.

People forget, ya know? People forget. And it's sad. Because I'd like to think that we were put on this earth to make every day, hour, minute and second count.

I remember, back in London, the person I was rooming with, Jason, became a good friend of mine on the trip. We were pretty much inseparable over the course of the trip, which lasted two weeks. I came home naïvely believing that we would continue our friendship--BFF's forever, ya know?

The operative word, in this case, is "naïve." Except for a few shout-outs from my end via phone and one or two London Tripper reunions at Old Chicago or run-ins on campus, I never heard from him or saw him again.

Until a couple of days ago, Sunday.

I was driving to my parents house and, while stopped at a red light, I saw him through my driver-side window. I looked right at him, staring, letting his face trigger an instant flashback in my head, reminding me of the good times I had, times--whether it was with him or just by myself...the whole London trip, to be honest, is one of the high points in my fairly short life--that I'll never forget.

In that moment, he caught me staring at him.

Now, I don't know whether he thought I was just some weird dude staring at him or maybe--just maybe--he remembered me and what I meant to him during a very specific time and a very specific place in the small universe of his life. All I know is that he stared back at me, ever so briefly, and offered me a reluctant head nod, as if he was trying to figure something out, piece something together.

And I knew--I knew!!--I was still there.

Somewhere.

And really...that was all I needed.