For My 16-Year-Old Self

Did you ever meet someone, but never really get to know him?  Have someone going on with his life, never knowing he made an impact on yours?  I'm going to pretend we all have that someone, so I won't feel embarrassed, and I'll write him a letter from a girl he never knew existed.  Because sometimes, you want to go back in time and tell yourself to just ACT!  Do something, even if he laughs, if they all laugh, so that when you're old you won't wonder why you didn't.
So, here goes:  To you, for me.

Dear So and So,

We sat next to each other for only a semester in my junior year, your senior.  The class was music theory, or something like that, taught by Mr. Something Or Other.  He was fat.  Obese, really.  With a mustache.
There was no assigned seating, but we sat next to one another, in the back corner.
You were....tall.  Taller than me, and gangly, with scruffy brown hair.  Your uniform was jeans and a t-shirt of a distant, long-dead band.  I would light up when you wore Pink Floyd's The Division Bell, because I just knew we were destined to be friends when I saw that shirt.
The days we had class together, I would wear my band t-shirts, so that you could see I was cool, also.  So that one day, you would declare, "Hot damn!  The Who kicks ass!  Let's hang out!"
But you never did.

Instead, we would crack quiet jokes and make brief eye contact.  And then the teacher would shout, "Good cracker!" as he was wont to do, and you would burst into laughter.  I only just recently learned that good cracker could be construed as a racist term, and wish I'd known then, so I could laugh with you.  I always thought he was talking about Saltines.  Don't know why...

I never asked to be friends.  Looking back, I don't know why.  I suppose that awkward teen I was must have had some pretty important reasons.  I was so lonely, though, and thought we would have gotten along pretty well.  I spent my solitary hours listening to music, looking at pictures of the 70's in my history books, and reading Aldous Huxley.  You would have liked me, I think.

But you were a year older, and gone before I knew what hit me.  The school flooded, but I think you knew that.  One of the mean girls, who always wore pink, and put hairspray in her bangs got an infestation in her locker from all that water.
I wanted to thank you for that.  Like a weird going-away present, one you didn't even know you gave.  I missed you when you were gone.  Continuing on with music theory, watching Mr. Something Or Other balance precariously atop a small stool, and having no one to impress with my limitless knowledge of Pink Floyd.

I hope you're well.  Let's be friends.

Good Cracker!
Cait