i saw him on the corner again today. i wondered where he’d been, what he’d seen. did he ever make that big trip overseas he was talking about? did he find that new confidence he privately lamented about to me drunkenly, a few years back? had his horizons expanded, his views changed, the world been made smaller?
the answer was obviously no. why, of all the places on this green earth, would he come back to this place? this place of sameness, of a small town with all its familiar quirks, making it less quirky and more ordinary? what would the good be in that?
maybe that was the point. after all this time finding those new horizons, maybe he got sick of it. maybe the newness and curiosity wore off, leading to that oh-so-familiar cultural diffusion valley of distrust and dismay at routine upheaval. so, he bought a ticket on the first flight back home and came back. stuck eating the same chicken boxes and snowballs of our youth.
i’ll never know, though. he still owes me beer money, the cheap bastard