(Originally posted on Myspace, February 17th, 2007)
Image swiped from Myspace. Good ol' Myspace
Back when I was new at NMSU, I lived on campus. Every morning, I would eat with Nathan Jones in the dining hall; lunch to me, breakfast to him.
My very favorite memory of Nathan is the day he told me, “I have a personal question to ask. Geez, this is embarrassing…”
I froze, braced for anything, until he learned forward and murmered, “What are split ends, and do I have them?”
Years have passed, but now every time I pass the Corbett end of campus I catch myself thinking, “Hey, maybe I’ll run into Nathan Jones!” until I remember that he moved back to St. Louis. This happened to me all last Spring, too, even though I knew he was living in Mexico; “Hey, maybe I’ll run… into…. Nathan J…. oh. No. I suppose not.”
Honestly, I barely know anything about Nathan; we talked about music, food, and our unruly hair, but you couldn’t call us close friends. Even ‘friends’ is stretching the point. Nevertheless, I am a deeply sentimental, nostalgic soul, so I miss Nathan Jones.
Swimming in reverie…
I miss so many things: friends from elementary school (even the mean kids), JNCO jeans, Pound Puppies, playing board games with my siblings (even the mean ones), the shed I used as a music room, my battered old guitars, my best friend Greyloon, the agony of teenage romance, the smell of honeysuckle in Indiana, old bedrooms, dancing in the rain, hideous polyester shirts, Sunday afternoons baking and reading with Sara, old flames (not the mean ones), being young and cocky….. the good old days.
The children from elementary school will never know how much I admired them, I lose touch with old boyfriends, and very few people know how much I love them. While some trust too easily, I rarely trust. I keep to myself at school— most of my classmates would be surprised to learn that I have any personality at all. But underneath all that, I am softer than custard. I care deeply for almost everyone I know. I never forget a face.
Having been here for two or three years, there are plenty of faces on campus I recognize. I feel warmth for these people, these familiar strangers. Do they recognize me, I wonder? A week or two ago, I held the elevator for a guy with a ponytail. Now I’ll be forced to remember him forever— that’s the way my brain works. Would he recognize me?
You can imagine how cluttered my memory gets, with all these faces milling around. It’s no wonder I distract so easily. I’ll be off work soon, biking home past Corbett. Hey, maybe I’ll run into Nathan…..
…oh.
No, I won’t.
It can be unsettling to look back at things we wrote in the past and to see how we have or haven’t changed. Heck, it’s weird for me to look back at things I wrote more than six months ago, before one of my very best friends passed away, when we were still closer than close and I couldn’t talk without talking about her.
I still identify with this feeling that I think you are talking about here. When I was going to school, I would see professors that I liked or classmates I’d had a good interaction with, and I would have imaginary conversations with them instead of actually speaking to them because I didn’t want to take the chance to mess up the last satisfying encounter we’d had. That doesn’t sound like the same thing at all, but it feels similar to me.
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Rebekah Reply:
July 21st, 2011 at 8:07 PM
“It can be unsettling to look back at things we wrote in the past and to see how we have or haven’t changed.”
Oh, I know. All the faults I was soooo sure I could shake off…
“When I was going to school, I would see professors that I liked or classmates I’d had a good interaction with, and I would have imaginary conversations with them instead of actually speaking to them because I didn’t want to take the chance to mess up the last satisfying encounter we’d had.”
Interesting. I don’t recall feeling that way normally, but I HAVE been bothered to bid someone farewell, then run into them again and mess up a perfectly good goodbye. If that makes sense.
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So when you return to Las Cruces and bike home past Corbett if you DO run into Nathan Jones you will know you’ve biked yourself into a Time Warp.
That is something to look forward to.
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Rebekah Reply:
July 21st, 2011 at 8:08 PM
Hope I bike back to last Thursday night so I can pay my phone bill on time!
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