IN LINE AT THE GROCERY

 

When I was in the sixth grade living up in Detroit, I went to middle school for a month before we moved back to Texas. In that month, walking home in the afternoons, I would walk behind a girl named Mary McD#######. She had gone to a different elementary school than I. She may have been in one of my classes, I don’t know, but sometimes I would pass her in the hall. She was easy to spot because she always wore a white blouse and a green or red Tartan style checkered skirt. And the shirt was usually untucked, which along with her tousled hair and striking Scottish lines, gave her a very tomboyish look.  But after school I would follow twenty feet behind her and after about two blocks she would turn right, and I would continue on ahead to my house. I don’t recall we ever spoke, but I never forgot her, the strawberry blonde hair, her name, or those Tartan skirts. For fifty odd years there’s probably not a year go by that Mary would not enter into some reverie or daydream of mine. In my minds eye I could see her face and wondered if I had ever spoken to her at all (how could my memory be so vivid and everlasting had I not?), if she ever stopped dressing like a Catholic schoolgirl, and whether we would have been friends had I stayed in Detroit and ever got up the nerve to speak to her..

Fast forward 50 years and there she is on Facebook. She looks just like I remember her.
That’s her on the right and I swear she hasn’t changed a bit. If I stood behind her in line at the grocery I would be tempted to tap her on the shoulder and ask “Is your name Mary?”

I guess that maybe I did get up the nerve to speak to her in that small one month window before moving to Texas. Mary says she has some recollection of me.
Or maybe she is just being kind.