I was in line at Office Depot and realized that the cashier was a guy I knew from childhood. I couldn’t really place him, but I knew that he was someone I was around a whole lot in middle school. And then I panicked. Was this a victim of mine from my mean girls days? Was this one of those kids I tortured on the bus because I used to get tortured on the bus? Was this someone whose house I used to loiter outside with my douchebag friends, yelling his name for hours on end? Was this the guy I pretended to be madly in love with because haha, he was ugly and no one would ever love him? As I got further in line, my heart started racing and I needed to know what it was. I stared at his face, willing whatever terrible thing I probably did to him would come back to me before it came back to him and we briefly made eye contact. I was fucked. Not even this ridiculous Rogue stripe in my hair would disguise me from who I used to be. The man in front of me paid for his binders and left. I put my envelopes on the counter and waited. 

“Did you go to Fountain Valley?” he asked. High school? Maybe he forgot about the shit I put him through in middle school! Things were looking up!

“Yes.” Sweat seeping through my cardigan.

“And Boy & Girls Club?”

“No.” Confusion.

“Did you do musicals at the Boys & Girls Club?”

“Yes!” A deranged fan of my work in musicals such as Flapper, The Lady Pirates of Captain Bree, and Seussical, perhaps?

“Yeah, you always played the bad guy and I played your henchman.” 

Oh, thank fuck. I let out an internal sigh and laughed. We reminisced for a few short seconds as I paid my 2.79. 

“Good to see you again,” he said as I was leaving.

It was a nice, seeing someone who actually liked me from those days. But whenever I run errands or go out to eat I know there’s a chance of seeing someone whose life I used to make hell and it really scares the shit out of me. I wish I could just wear a shirt that says “I’m sorry for whatever I did to you in middle school. In high school I started listening to John Lennon and Bob Dylan and I discovered humanism and I began to understand who I am and I became a better person but yes, I was a shithead in middle school. Sorry again.”