We were fifteen-year-old
classmates. He was quiet, intelligent, and a good friend. My soon-to-be- best
friend thought he was cute, and I had never really noticed him until then. Slowly
we all became friends, a big group of friends (wonder where they are now?). We
would hang out together, borrowing books and notebooks, taking long walks home and
gathering at a friend’s house after classes. We were young, and looking back at
our pictures I cannot believe how unbelievably young we were; I with my short
hair and innocent face, he with his shy and innocent smile.
I liked him, but not
in that girl-likes-boy kind of like. He was mad about music and books, and we
were at that age where we first discovered the wonder of novels, and the
freedom of reading non-study material. He would bring me his Sidney Sheldons
and Jeffrey Archers, and I in turn let him borrow the textbooks I had.
On his sixteenth
birthday we went for a class picnic. My best friend was mad about him then, and
another friend and I followed him all day, essentially being pests. Maybe we
thought we were spying on him, but he didn’t seem to mind it. I guess I must
have harboured a crush on him all the time because I was just too happy to spy
on my friend’s behalf. Nothing developed between him and my best friend, and we
all remained good friends.
In the Physics and Chemistry
labs we were divided into groups of four, and with a little manipulation we
ended up in the same group. There was that one time we used potassium permanganate
in one of our Chemistry experiments. We must have played around with the stuff,
and I went home with a big purple stain on my shirt which didn’t wash off easily.
It’s been many years,
and the memories are dim. College happened, we went our separate ways, and lost
touch. I am not big on keeping in touch, and it was a nice surprise when we ran
into each other on the streets some six years later. We said our hellos and
how-have-you-beens and not much else. Life had taken over, and suddenly there
were more important things, more important people.
A couple of years back
another friend of our old group and I discovered each other on Facebook, and we
talked about the good old times. Somehow the conversation turned to him and I asked
if she had his phone number, to which she replied “He’s married.” I went “Oh, that’s
nice!” and that was the end of it.
