Two Ships

I was standing at the kitchen counter tonight, trying to decide if I needed something else to eat (and, 24 hours after polishing off the last Thin Mint and swearing off Girl Scouts forever, wishing I had just one more box in the freezer), when I remembered something I haven't thought about in years.

One summer day when I was a teenager, before I could drive, I was lazing around the house, the way you can do--I now realize--for a very small window, when I got a phone call. It was one of my favorite friends, the one who shared my sense of ironic detachment (or so I flattered us), love for protest music of the 60s, the notion that writing sonnets to each other and signing them with each other's crush du jour was an excellent way to spend a free period. This friend lived in the next town over, off the main road in both of our towns, which winds all the way across the United States and is called Route 20. We lived off it too.

"What are you doing?" she must have said.

"Nothing," I probably answered. (Pause for a moment while I strain to recall what this felt like: doing nothing. Nothing to do. Let's move on. I can't.)

Somehow we decided that it would be a good idea to get out our bikes and each start riding up Route 20 in the direction of the other one's house. (If you had an urban, or at least a more exotic childhood, you may be squinting, confused. Yes. Before you can drive, there's not that much else to do.) We agreed on a departure time shortly thereafter, and after we hung up I got ready, dragged my bike out of the garage and set off.

I rode for a while, until I reached our town's little commercial strip where the town's one and only gourmet food shop happened to reside. For some reason it didn't occur to me to think about my friend, pedaling away toward me. The idea, of course, was that at some point, approximately halfway bewteen our houses, we would meet. And then do what? I don't know. Sit by the side of the road and talk? Buy Fribbles at Friendlys? We hadn't gotten that far. I propped my bike up against a tree (no, no lock, not necessary) and went in to do a little window shopping. I may have even bought a little snack. At this point, I imagine I was in a good mood: a day that had stretched ahead interminably had been transformed into a day with a friend and a novel plan to boot. I made my way back to my bike, hopped on, kept riding.

I was so able to lose myself back then that even as I entered my friend's town, neared her house, it didn't seem strange that we had not yet convened. There were no cell phones, naive readers under 30. There was no possible way for us to connect, communicate. Except: Joel. In a scene that was not wholly uncommon during my adolescence in particular, a car slowed beside me as I rode. I looked over, and it was my dad's. My friend was in the car too. Apparently she had stuck to the plan, ridden all the way to my house, wondering if somehow we'd managed to pass each other on Route 20 without realizing it, and encountered my dad, who probably narrowly escaped having a massive coronary. All this while I had been pondering sea salt bagel chips versus a long red licorice whip at the unfortunately named Duck Soup.

Sadly, I think my friend, whose bike was by this point in my father's trunk, went home. I was probably disappointed.

But tonight, maybe 24 years later, this memory made me smile.