I think I saw Danny today.
Danny is someone from the past. Not the type of past that happened twenty, thirty years ago -- I am simply not old enough to have collected such memories, but it's The Past, a different era and a different life, nonetheless.
Danny and I were working at a basement of a Manhattan stationery store. I worked there full-time in between coming to America and going to college; I do not really remember if he worked full- or part-time. I am not sure if this is important...
I am not even sure it was him. I think it was, though. This would make him taller and bulkier now than he was back then, when we were still not quite out of teenagehood. I remember him teaching me salsa in the basement with the music blaring and Kalik, the mysterious, immensely intelligent, Jack Sparrow-like bastard, grinning in the background, while unwrapping the boxes of merchandise that had just arrived on the freight elevator .
Who was our supervisor then? I don't quite remember... Was it the dope-smoking, womanizing happy guy? Or was it the somewhat stuffy relative of some other manager who never quite understood how the basement worked? I am not sure if this is important, either.
What is important, then? Perhaps the undeniable fact that the-guy-who-I-think-is-Danny is obviously a blue-collar worker, while I never again had a non-white-collar job after the Store. And that I did not, for one reason or another, speak up to him to ask, "Hey, Danny? Are you Danny?". I'm sure those things are important. I'm not quite sure why or how.
I was wrong not to ask. I don't have any contact with people who knew me before college and for me, the memory of those times is precious. But instead of treasuring the memories, shouldn't it be better to meet the same people again and make more memories...
Danny and I were working at a basement of a Manhattan stationery store. I worked there full-time in between coming to America and going to college; I do not really remember if he worked full- or part-time. I am not sure if this is important...
I am not even sure it was him. I think it was, though. This would make him taller and bulkier now than he was back then, when we were still not quite out of teenagehood. I remember him teaching me salsa in the basement with the music blaring and Kalik, the mysterious, immensely intelligent, Jack Sparrow-like bastard, grinning in the background, while unwrapping the boxes of merchandise that had just arrived on the freight elevator .
Who was our supervisor then? I don't quite remember... Was it the dope-smoking, womanizing happy guy? Or was it the somewhat stuffy relative of some other manager who never quite understood how the basement worked? I am not sure if this is important, either.
What is important, then? Perhaps the undeniable fact that the-guy-who-I-think-is-Danny is obviously a blue-collar worker, while I never again had a non-white-collar job after the Store. And that I did not, for one reason or another, speak up to him to ask, "Hey, Danny? Are you Danny?". I'm sure those things are important. I'm not quite sure why or how.
I was wrong not to ask. I don't have any contact with people who knew me before college and for me, the memory of those times is precious. But instead of treasuring the memories, shouldn't it be better to meet the same people again and make more memories...