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Way back when
I was in high school there was a girl in my physics class named Annette.
She was a frumpy, large girl who wore old-fashioned dresses and glasses
that were once in fashion in the fifties. She smoked all of us scholastically
and was very quiet and unassuming. She was not a popular girl but wasn’t
openly despised, either. She just sort of faded into the woodwork and escaped
notice altogether.
She was a
“good” girl, not doing drugs, drinking, smoking, or going to wild parties,
while I was a “bad” boy, heavily into drugs and skipping a lot of school.
The one thing we had in common was neither one of us were making it on
the social scene.
In class,
Annette would always sit quietly by herself, not taking part in the conversation
around her before class started. She just sat there, perfectly composed
and dignified. There was nothing about her demeanor that suggested hurt
or pain, nothing to suggest that she needed someone to talk to, yet there
was something about her that made me want to sit next to her and engage
her in conversation. I would try to make her laugh, to make her feel comfortable,
bring her out of her shell.
One day she
asked me why I did drugs, and I parroted something about opening the doors
of perception or some meaningless thing I had heard or read as empty justification.
She wasn’t satisfied with my answer, and uncharacteristically hammered
home her points in a single-mindedly determined manner. She was not
angry or intent on making a moral issue out of it, she was just genuinely
concerned for me. It was the first time I had ever seen her lose her usual
reserve.
I never asked
her out. I kept going my own way, used drugs, and continued to feel good
making her smile.
Graduation
day. I was on my way to college on a free ride by some miracle. I would
throw it away within the year, but that’s another story.
I’m talking
with my mom and my grandparents after the ceremony when Annette quickly
walks up to me. She is filled with emotion, her eyes are glistening, her
face red. She kisses me on the cheek and runs away embarrassed. I never
see her again.
I’m stunned.
My mother, pleased and surprised, wants to know she is. I mumble “just
a girl in my physics class.” … just a girl…
Today she
is probably a CEO or something, or at least I fervently hope so,
while I languish in this factory, and will forever marvel at how I touched
her life, and she mine, without my ever having realized it.