Inside Gigi's World

About a month ago I went into a store in my town—a store that I go in to frequently because I buy my ice and tin trays (for tie-dying) and my candy stash to share with my students (which one tends to go through a lot of when you work at a high school). I was in the checkout line spacing out when I heard the cashier’s voice which brought me back to reality from the other planet I had just been visiting. 

“Would you like a bag?” I’m not sure how many times she had asked me because the last time I had any concept of what was going on in front of me, one person was inserting their card at the card reader while the other was placing the divider on the belt for me so I could put my horde of candy down. 

“Uh?”

“A bag. Would you like a bag?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Thank you.”

I watched her as she took each bag of candy and rang it through the scanner, dropping my sugary, artificial-flavored items into the brown paper bag. Beep. Beep. Beep, the register sang. 

Hypnotized by the song of the cash register, my attention is pulled from the screen that shows my items being rang up by the now familiar voice of the cashier again, “Do I know you?”

“Ummm…sorry. I don’t think so.”

“I know that I know you. You look so familiar.”

Truth be told, I get that a lot. My youth was spent wild and running a muck. I spent a lot of nights at clubs and house parties, places that I had no business being. I was loud and more times than not, there was no caution with me, only impulsivities which led to a lot of “remember the time she…” stories. I was oblivious to most of the people that were around me, not always noticing who was around. So you can see, I am sure, how these past endeavours have created some pretty awkward moments in my adult life. 

“No. I am sorry. You don’t look familiar to me.” To make the blow of not sharing the same moment of deja vu as the cashier, I interjected with the same line that I usually do when I am in these moments and I respond with, “I have been doing hair for like 25 years. I’ve probably done your hair at one time or another. “

As I stand there waiting for her to hand me my bag and my change, the people in the line behind me getting irritated that they are being held up because she won’t stop questioning me nor hand me my change. 

“I know I know you.”

“I don’t think you do.” 

She handed me my bag and my change and told me to have a nice day. 

The next time I went in, she was the cashier that checked me out when I was ready to exit the store. Part of me wanted to put the candy back on the shelves and head out, purchesless, just to avoid another draining conversation but I had already gone to school the day prior without any candy and I promised the kids I’d stop at the store that evening so I’d have candy the next day at school. I know, I don’t have to feed or give candy to my students. I understand that wholeheartedly but since working at the school, with teenagers that mostly just want to be seen, I realize that it isn’t about the candy but instead about the thought that an adult that they respect thought of them. Besides, a promise is a promise so I wasn’t putting the candy back. I put it on the belt which rolled on down towards her, stopping long enough for her to cash out the person in front of me when our song and dance began all over again.

The first item went through the scanner and made a loud beep. That’s when she looked at me and said, “You still don’t remember me?” She tossed the candy into another brown paper bag. I think to myself, I really should just start bringing in a bag with me when I come into this store. 

“No.” I respond. I ask her, “And you still don’t know where you know me from?”

“No.”

“Well, if you don’t remember how do you expect me to remember?”

She gave a little giggle, finished cashing me out and I was on my way. 

As you can imagine, as luck would have it, I soon needed candy again. So I made my way into the store for my usual haul of Mambas, Werthers, gum, individual bags of beef jerky and some chocolate and made my way over to the register where, you guessed it, was the same cashier. 

The moment she saw me, she grinned in a way that made her look a bit like the grinch. My items made their way towards her on the belt. The closer my items got to her, the bigger her grin got. Before I could say anything to her, she asked, “Did you go to $%#^&*#&%$ for high school?”

“I did.”

She was still cashing out people, one elderly woman that she made the bags so heavy she couldn’t pick them up and the couple that was standing in front of me. She was so distracted that she started to cash out the couple’s items with the elderly woman’s items and she had to call the manager over to fix it. 

“You went there and you don’t remember me?”

The couple looks at me in a way that I can’t tell if they think I am an asshole for not remembering her or if I am an asshole for not playing along. I feel myself getting a little red in the ears and cheeks but not because I am embarrassed but more annoyed. I just want my candy and I want to go home. 

“I am sorry I don’t but in my defense I did a lot of drugs in high school, hard drugs, so I don’t remember a whole lot.” Even though I was being truthful, I was also trying to lighten  the mood a little. I didn’t want to be unkind. But, the brass-knuckles of the fact is that I had a lot of stuff going on in high school that most high-schoolers wouldn’t understand. I was not your typical 14, 15, 16, 17, year-old kid. 

She gasps, “Oh, I would have never done that. I never did drugs.” 

She is better than I. 

I ask her, “What year did you graduate?”

“2004.”

“I graduated in 2002.” I think to myself, it was over twenty years ago, we weren’t in the same grade. How many people even remember the people from their own class after twenty years, nevermind someone they never had a conversation with. 

She says to me, “You were best friends with Mikey!”

“I was.” I say solemnly.

She is giddier than a highschool girl talking about my best friend. “I had the biggest crush on him ever.”

“A lot of people did.” I say just as solemnly. 

“What’s he up to nowadays?”

“He’s dead.”

Uncomfortable silence. 

“That’s not funny.” She looks stung.

“Well, if you think it’s not funny, imagine how it feels being the one to say it outloud.” I am stung. 

“It’s so sad isn’t it?” I know where she’s going with this but I can’t help but willingly fall into the trap. 

“What is?”

“How many people we went to school with that died so young from drugs.”

I feel myself internally reeling, I inhale a large amount of air to steady myself before I respond, “He didn’t die from fucking drugs. He had cancer.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed…”

“Yeah, well you shouldn’t. It makes you look like an ass.”

I grabbed my bag and left. 

June 18th, eleven years later and I still find having to have any kind of conversation about Mikey’s death as difficult as when it first happened. He was so well known, so well liked, that I always find myself a little surprised when someone doesn’t know that he has died. Although, it has been a very long time since I have had to have that conversation with someone. It has been eleven years and I am not sure what bothers me more now, back in the beginning when all anyone wanted to do was talk to me about Mikey and his death and not much else or the fact that now, no one really talks about it at all. 

When I think of Mikey, I think of simpler times, when the world hadn’t jaded us, when laughs came easier and freer. I think of times when we were too young to know any better and when we believed that forever would be just that, that we would never grow old, we would never get sick and we would never die. Because when you’re young all of those things seem so far away. I think of times when he’d drive us all around, annoyed that we changed the radio station to music that he never liked even though he’d almost always sing along. I think of him in button-up shirts that had flames on them, missing his tooth and just how that happened, with all the girls following him around the halls of our high school. 

There are so many stories. The sad part is, most of the people in our stories are ghosts now. I often think about how in our youth I was one of the youngest in the group. Now I think often about how I have surpassed most of them in age. Mikey is no different. He is forever 29 while this year I will be 41. 

If I am being honest, there are times I forget Mikey is gone. I think of him in Colorado. I think of him on his motorcycle or out shooting his guns. And then something big happens—one of life’s big milestones—and I go to call him and then I remember all over again that he is no longer here. 

So today, as we think of Mikey on what marks the beginning of his eleventh year of death, I choose to remember him in life. 

Today, Mikey is out on his bike, amongst the Colorado mountains and I will call him later to tell him about everything that has been going on.