i agonised to a point over what to put in the text of my high school yearbook entry. there ended up being a terrible picture of me, almost accompanied by some lyrics from the sleep station song "hang in there charlie" (which i had even counted the characters of to ensure that they would fit) before succumbing to a bit of a chaucer mood and putting in a short canterbury tales excerpt instead. i suppose one has to really love reading and medievalism to have a "chaucer mood," but that was me. and still is: in the spirit of accuracy, it's actually nevill coghill's modernised version. it goes like this:

A straw for all your dreamings and your scares.
Dreams are just empty nonsense, merest japes
Why, people dream all day of owls and apes,
All sorts of trash that can't be understood,
Things that have never happened and never could.

it fit for me alongside everyone else's fond memories and wishes for the future. made sense. oh, he'd do that.

anyway, the yearbook having been issued, we graduated and went our separate ways-- but not before grad night. the next morning, my family decided it was a good time to have my family-centric grad party. me, on only a few hours sleep. i remember this, specifically:

my aunt donna, who teaches small children, has an unfortunate tendency to speak to everyone as though she thinks they are straining to understand her every word. she bought me a fancy "plugs right into the wall" surge protector that was later condemned by a salem state residence hall safety inquisition as a dangerously subversive "octopus plug." she also insisted upon seeing my yearbook, paying special attention to what i'd chosen as a textual representation of myself. i also immortalised the "SLARY A" joke from 10th grade with the remaining space, but she was more interested in the "oh, chaucer" aspect.

oooooooooooh.

brian and donna's house, things i remember: hearing they were very devout christians who sang happy birthday to jesus complete with cake on christmas morning. paul, the oldest son, going through varied stages of obsession in which he gathered everything related to whatever the focal point was at the time-- two such obsessions included elvis and star trek: the next generation. one time i was there for his birthday and he got this x-men action figure, wolverine more orange than yellow. i played that game that's sort of like pool except with bumpers on the table with some old guy there one time. and there was this girl, this black-haired girl i may or may not be related to, who was there in the distant reaches of my childhood memory. mystic figure.

i come back to that because i think i saw her, indeed, that i was in a class with her, in that last year of high school. when the whole of our creative writing class was instructed to bring in a fairy tale of one type or another to read aloud to the class, either of our own composition or from a favourite source for the writing of others, she brought in an old book with a long story about a tin soldier and his courageously longing exploits, all cool metallic yearning and implausible journeying. her voice was sweet with just a hint of soft sharpness, a certainty in the words evident if not a powerful drive behind the voice itself. everyone thanked her because her selection was so long and headed off the efforts of michael edmonds several seats down in line, who was doubtless intending to read another of his obsessive, egomaniacal creations to a captive audience. but her reading was good too, it shouldn't be forgotten:

whoa. good fairy tale.

--and i had that feeling: knew that i knew her from somewhere. that realisation that it was donna's house so long ago didn't hit me until later and how would you approach someone with that anyway? the awkwardness of starting a conversation in the manner that would have been required would have dashed through the faint link of this mystery possible-cousin across the room, our empathetic glances during long objectionable sharing sessions by classmates and the murmur of recognition that may have just been visible in my eyes.