Past Lives Part 2

I have already said that I think a male who I grew up with had lived a past life with me.  He is the one I associate with the name Josh- a guy with brown hair and brown eyes who I always see in my mind wearing a baseball cap.  I used to have a big crush on him- you know the kind where looking back I felt like he was better than me and it would never work, but I still dwelled on how attracted I was to him.  I am almost sure he saw me as a dorky little preteen/teenager when we were kids- his male relative owned a small yet quaint and famous hot dog stand where I bought many a hot dog without ketchup yet with celery salt.  I have seen his people in places like my school gym and the class I am taking at the moment.  I don’t think they are better than me nor do I think I am better than them, but I used to think that thy were the thing I belonged to, since we seemingly have so much in common.  I used to think he was the king of the gypsies, but, according to the silent chatting that goes on while I walk down the street, I am princess of the gypsies and the Josh people belong to another, yet unnamed group of magic, past life people.

My Dad and I used to walk my dog down the busy street closest to our house.  My Dad, Emmett and I would take it easy and walk down the street, Emmett going crazy at almost every passing of a truck or large vehicle.  My Dad would wear his Bears hat and when we got to the big parking lot of the closest public grammar school, he would let Emmett off the leash for him to run around.  I occasionally saw some young people my age, driving almost recklessly down the street in whatever cars their parents bought them or whatever SUV they bought with the money earned from their part time after school job.  One of my friends who lived a bit of a ways down the busy street had a car with two fuzzy pink dice hanging from the front mirror, and looking back I wonder if she was thinking of some element of paradise (pair-a-dice).  There were a few times I saw my peers who I currently used to go to school with, and I would hardly know them, yet I would look forward to the day when one day we would meet, whether that be in reality or paradise.  The encounter that sticks out in my mind was when a car full of boys passed my Dad and I (and I think my dog) in a rowdy fashion, yet I was not perturbed.  They yelled out something that I can’t exactly pinpoint in my mind, but the one who I remember saying it, I remember the gentle look in his eyes, his dark eyes matching his dark hair.  That was a younger version of the crowd of my peers that now are in their mid-thirties, and so much has changed.  The innocence of joy riding on a Friday night has gone out the window.  Friends have been made and lost. The twilight of a busy street walk after dinner has faded. 

The hood that I grew up in holds many a memory, but I feel like I have grown too much to dwell on the past.  Things used to be so simple- my highs coming from after dinner walks or the cross of paths that come between become peers who had gone to neighboring high schools, these all cannot be replicated because the magic of adolescence has gone.  If I could go back, I would try to connect with whatever promise of friendship came my way, even if this only happens for a few moments on a Friday night.  I would wave when some of my other peers drove around the basketball courts of Garvy just to see me attempt a free throw in a hoop with no net and a faded square on the backboard.  Who was the kid in a blue baseball cap?  Was he the one I had a crush on at the third high school I went to?  Who was the boy who yelled out to me in the night , the one with dark hair and eyes who I associate with the thing in the back of my head when someone always mouths out a few specific words?  Kind eyes are worth a million dollars, especially when you don’t have that much to live on, that much to cling to, on the lonely nights that end with me looking forward to Saturday Night Live.  Because otherwise, I would be alone.