Guess Who's Back

I just got back to Portland from a weekend spent, for no real reason, in Corvallis. Every time I go down there something amazing happens. This time it was at one of the many new chic downtown c-town bars, I guess nobody told people in Corvallis that they weren't classy or upscale. Bobby and Martin and I were bored so we went to this bar called Downward Dog, you know like the yoga position, see Corvallis is no only hip but very humorous. While there I saw my friend Sara, who really lives in Portland but is on an extended vacation from some of her more harmful extracurricular activities, and she was talking to this guy in a huge cowboy hat and boots et al. I figured it was someone Sara knew, she knows all kinds of strange people, and he got up and started talking to me and Martin and Bobby. He was very animated and interested in his chosen topic of conversation. He is in the Air Force, and is soon to be shipped to Korea. In the middle of his epic speech on the many different types of people that are in the Air Force, and what said people do when they are posted to somewhere remote like Korea, I realized that I knew this man. I asked him if he had ever gone to Harding elementary school. Indeed he had. In fact he and I had been in the same fourth and fifth grade classes. Its possible that we were also in the same third grade class. He went to Philomath for middle school and high school, and I haven't seen him since the last day of fifth grade. That was 1995, thirteen years ago. I have a good memory, especially for names and faces, but this one even shocked me a little bit. It turns out he was not there with Sara. He had kind of invaded their group, and I think that my talking to him made it harder for her and her friends to ditch him.