Very Short Story

I was at the check out counter contemplating cash for my return or store credit when I heard my name.

"You don't recongnize me do you? It's me, _____."

Immediately I knew that I'd always known the face. It was a facebook face. One that I hadn't seen in real life in years. The funny thing about Facebook is that it blurs the line between high school friend/ old co-worker from five jobs ago/ random colleague you met a conference and B-list reality show celebrity from a show you don't watch. You are familiar with the face, but in a totally decontextualized way.

This particular face in front of me at the store belonged to the High School friend category. It had, like lots of faces from those days, become more handsome, more comfortable, wider and more placid then a teenage face could ever be.

"How is the business?" he asked.

"It's good, Thank you."

"You seem really busy."

The other really weird thing about Facebook is that people actually do get "updates" about your life. I was really busy. I also knew that he was doing stand up comedy and somewhere in the recesses of my mind I knew his day-gig involved working in a bookstore. I asked about both. It was a conversation that reminded me of an Art History test- somewhere, at some time, you just KNOW who painted which painting when they show the slide. You didn't even know if you knew it. If someone would have asked him about me or me about him out of the context of seeing one another, I don't know that either of us would have been able to recall what the other person was doing with his life.

I was about to collect my cash and dispose of my now empty bag when he said;
"You know, I was just thinking about you the other day. I was thinking about the day you discovered I was afraid of heights."

"We were practicing for some play together and Mr. Smyth asked me to get up onto this pretty short ladder and I really didn't want to do it. A few weeks later we had the same shop class and I needed to get on a ladder for something and I asked someone else to do it for me. You pulled me aside and said "You're afraid of heights, aren't you?" I don't know if I knew I was afraid of heights myself until that point. You always helped me avoid them from that point on."

We said our goodbyes and I was amazed. I tried for days to remember this interaction that had stayed with this other person for all these years and I couldn't.

I used to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge all the time. It's a lovely walk, but half of the time walking is spent dodging bullets of camera shots of tourists from Italy, Memphis, Pakistan, Greece. I always wondered whose photos I was going to be a part of without ever knowing it. Who might know my face without me realizing that they did. Memories are so much like tourist photos; these iconic images from your life that you review and look at again and again. So much so that you remember all the things and people in the background that weren't so much the subject of the shot, but overtime they've become iconic parts of the composition.

I couldn't remember the conversation where I'd diagnosed my old classmates phobia, but I started pondering all the conversations that I had with other people that I've never forgotten but was certain that they had. I couldn't stop thinking of all the people that perhaps I'd left an impression on and all the many people that had impressed me. The guy in the post office in college who dumped my freshmen roommate, the dance teacher from when I was eight, my second boss who I loved and hated. And now, the class mate who was afraid of heights that I ran into in a book store.

The next week, he was dead. A heart attack at 32. I found out, of course, through Facebook.