Somebody that I used to know

This should come as no surprise, but I will start this with a fact that all of you need to know.

In life, you’ll meet a lot of people. You’ll see even more than you meet. The ratio of meet to see is never even close, so don’t feel like you’re behind.

You are. Hopelessly.

Some are the ones you’ve known since birth. Your parents. Childhood friends. Neighbors. Extended Family. Teachers. You saw other children and adults in the halls when you went to school. Then there were people that exist in single-serving doses, deployed to fill the scenery at malls, and stores and expo centers.

Some you see but don’t know and only find out their actual story much later. I used to see an old lady at Wal-mart every time I was there with my mom and thought she was some sort of freak show who just loved Wal-mart. Later I found out she was the head of security for the store, hiding in plain sight. She died several years back. I never knew her name.

Of all the people you’ve seen, or that have seen you, you have to wonder — did you make an impact? Were you even noticed? Did you notice them? Did both of you miss out on the other completely?

As you age, your social circle grows more complex. You’re introduced to popular culture and forms of communication like tv and radio and whatever you’re using to read this. You hear voices transmit through the air on machines invented by other people that you’ll never meet and you just have to guess at what their stories are. Your imagination could go wild. A whole world of people that you don’t know or have never seen, doing things you couldn’t possibly concieve of.

Let’s get out of the atmosphere and back to a manageable number of people that you come in contact with.

There are those you meet socially — friends of other friends — whose names exit your ears as soon as they enter them. “Nice to meet you!” you say as you think “I will never ever see you again.” You find an empty excuse to leave the situation that you had just walked up to enthusiastically moments before.

And they don’t mind, because they’ve already forgotten your name, too.

Really try to wrap your head around the concept of how many people you have come in contact with in your lifetime. How many have you physically touched with your hands? With a hug? How many have you bumped into on the subway?

On the other end of the spectrum, how many have touched your food? Or, if you really want to be sent into an OCD downward spiral, think of how many have touched your credit and debit cards while ringing up your purchases at stores and restaurants? That’s right, Purell that motherfucker.

Some of these people you come in contact with make an impact. Most don’t. Some enter your life for a very finite period. Work acquaintances. School friends. Those people that you see every day for a period of time and then never run into again.

I say all of this because one person in particular has entered my life three times…and I met him for the first time each time.

His name is Michael.

Michael was a new kid during my eighth grade year in Smyrna, TN. He somewhat passed the visual test for not being a freak or a weirdo. Nike shoes, check. Jeans. Black jacket. Seemed normal for the most part. As he slowly assimilated into the school lifestyle of jumping to different rooms for different subjects and learning the schedule of class, breaks, lunch, recess, etc., I’d notice that I’d catch him glancing at me often.

I finally asked him one day “What are you looking at, dude?”

He stammered out a quiet “I know you.”

“What?”

“I know you. We used to be friends.” He looked really uncomfortable. I didn’t care. I told him to shut up.

This stupid new kid was ruining my life.

It confused the shit out of me. It was also sort of embarrassing because this new kid who everyone was still not fully signed-off on was exclaiming in front of other people that he knew me, and this threatened MY social status in the Middle School caste system into being downgraded to the same level of importance as THE NEW KID.

He kind of grew out of his newness after a while, and turned into what I could now refer to as being “precocious.” He would smart-ass around and had the smugness and confidence that kids that age shouldn’t have naturally. It bothered me. As he became better friends with my friends, I was forced to be around this little asshole, who was “going steady” with an attractive girl from another class in our grade.

He made attempts to joke around with me but I coldly shut him out. I didn’t need any other friends. I didn’t need this kid that tried to bullshit his way into our good graces by acting like he knew me.

I didn’t know him. I’d never seen his stupid face with his squinty eyes and fuckin’ bowl hair cut. He made my blood boil. I would fantasize about following him in the woods behind the school that he’d walk through to his house and beating him to death with a rock. What? Things are dramatic in eighth grade.

As the school year progressed. My friend Daniel and I would volunteer to get recycling from all the classrooms so that we could ditch class for an hour every morning and then Daniel, who was 12 or 13 and already an accomplished cigarette smoker, would climb in the recycling bin and “hotbox” Marlboro Reds. I tried them and it almost made me barf all over myself. We grew really close that year and even had matching “Beavis and Butthead” plastic keychains that we’d put the latchkeys that opened the doors of our respective houses on.

As the school year progressed, Michael faded into the background of my teenage disdain. He made other friends, and enjoyed having the patina of being a shiny and interesting person that everyone could project their hopes and dreams onto. Or something like that.

School ended and the gossip when high school started was that his Dad got transferred during the summer and then he was gone.

Good bye. Good riddance.

No one made a big deal about it. Kids vanished between school years all the time. People’s entire existences were tied to the Nissan Motor Company there, and when the jobs went away, they did, too.

My senior year of high school, my parents moved from Smyrna to Murfreesboro, which is about 15 minutes from where I’d lived for my whole life. I packed my entire life into boxes and wasted many hours looking at everything I owned that I hadn’t used in years. Most brought back nostalgic moments that made me smile, or laugh or just remember parts of my life that I didn’t think about too often. One big thing that took a spot in my childhood room was this Asian lamp that my Grandfather got at some point in the 40s or 50s that was then passed down to my mother and then down to me. It was beautiful and had two Asian women in kimonos and hats leaning against a black tree that made up the majority of the base. The shade was made of sheet metal that was powder coated red and in the middle of the lamp there was a compartment where you could store small things such as your keys or pocket change.

I spent a lot of time dividing out the coins so I could cash them in, and put all the other things in their respective places. Once I was ready, I lifted the lamp to pack it away, and noticed flattened pieces of paper, candy wrappers, and some sort of date book that said “1987” and had the logo of a medicine company that I’m sure were trying to sell something to my father’s department at the Hospital where he worked at at the time.

I opened the date book and started flipping through pages. The front was filled out in my little kid scrawl with our home phone number in any spot that asked for anything that I didn’t know.

I’d drawn little characters in the book on random pages. Once I got to last few pages, I saw phone numbers for people that were friends of mine. Kids that I remembered vividly from Kindergarten and First Grade…

…And there he was on the very last page of the book. Michael. And his phone number.

I did some detective work and pieced together that he had been in Smyrna schools from pre-school age all the way up to when his family had moved away in the summer between his second and third grade year.

I had totally and completely known him. We had been friends, even. I had his phone number!

I felt like shit. I could only imagine what this guy, who saw me, and recognized me, and put it together who I was had felt like when he approached me and I treated him like I did. Like he was piece of shit. Like he was some sort of pariah who had made the horrible decision to talk to someone “important.”

It was too late, now. He had moved on after eighth grade. He made the most of his time when he was there and then when Dad or Mom or whoever had to move for whatever reason, he picked up his life again and went with them.

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good Night.

Years passed. Life happened. I went to college, and later I met a girl and then moved far, far away.

One year at Christmas time, I paid my folks a surprise visit, and was uncomfortable by how much had changed since I’d moved away. Urban sprawl had taken course and now nail shops and fast food chains had sprouted up in every place that had previously been woods or abandoned or plain old untouched country land.

It was strange and disarming and I didn’t like that things there that had kept on moving long after I had.

True to form, I didn’t bring my toothbrush, so one night I left my parent’s house and went out to Walgreens pharmacy to get a new one. I spent several minutes traipsing about, looking at different kinds, reading the backs of the packages, and noticed a bigger guy in my peripheral vision. I’d caught him glancing a few times and it was annoying me. I was finally about to leave and he made eye contact right as I’d started to walk away.

“Matt Barnette, is that you?”

“What the hell?” was what my brain said immediately. Freaked out that some random person was one, staring me down, and two, knew my name and pulled it out of thin air.

I stood there for a second and looked him over, trying to connect the dots of who this guy was. My body was in auto-pilot mode and walking towards him with hand outstretched.

“Hey, man…yeah, I’m Matt.”

“Long time, no see! Man…been a long time!”

“Yeah! What are you doing these…uh, these days?”

“Oh, I’m working for an air conditioning company out here. We do full installs and all that HVAC stuff. It pays the bills.”

I took a deep breath and decided to just ask.

“Man, I’m having a hard time remembering who you are. I’m sorry… I’m terrible with names.”

His smile melted off of his face and he placed what he was holding on a shelf in a spot that my stupid OCD brain noted was not the right place for it before he stepped forward with a big thick finger pointed squarely at my chest and said:

“You know what, man? FUCK YOU.”

He turned and walked straight out of the store.

I stood in the aisle for minute with a weird tinge of nausea mixed with what I now know to be an anxiety attack. I went home with my new toothbrush and a 12-pack of Diet Mountain Dew, and a case of thorough confusion.

What the hell was happening to me? Who was that?

Some fat guy knew my name and then told me to to go fuck myself! This does not happen!

It bothered me for days. Until it dawned on me who it was.

Then the guilt came right back and hit me like a runaway Mack truck.

I felt horrible.This poor guy, who I had somehow made an impression on at multiple stages of his life, and who I had then promptly wiped clean from my memory each and every time. How many times was this going to happen? What the hell is wrong with me that I don’t remember this ONE PERSON?

What must HE feel like?

Sure that I’d created some sort of legendary nemesis that would fnow ollow me throughout my life, I went back home to Arkansas. I didn’t talk about it with anyone, I felt that the sooner I forgot about him, the sooner I wouldn’t feel like such a terrible person.

Since then, I’ve met and seen more people, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues and single-serving people …but I’ve never seen Michael.

Michael, from second grade, who had been my friend and who had been forgotten when he moved away.

Michael, from eighth grade, who had remembered me fondly and had been rebuked cruelly by my older and more insecure self.

Michael, from adulthood, who saw a guy he’d been a kid alongside…and decided to catch-up with him only to end up feeling embarrassed and insignificant.

I’ve never seen him since then.

At least I don’t think I’ve seen him.

To be fair, I can’t even remember his last name.

Which brings it back to the bigger picture. All the people you meet throughout your life. The negligible levels of impact they all make on you, and that you make on them. How some are steadily a piece of your life and how others dip in and out at random intervals. How some are just background players, filling the sports arenas and traffic jams, and how maybe in the scheme of it all that you’re just not supposed to know them.

I like to think that this was the case with Michael What’s-his-name…wherever he may be.