Ran into a girlfriend that I used to date
She got married back in April but she said she couldn't wait
cause she had a newborn baby six months after that day
and she said a debt to life is a debt you gotta pay

Hometown friends mean a lot to me
but the longer I'm here, the less of them I see
and the further I get it seems the longer I'm away
I guess time equals distance that way
-Phil Pritchett

Pira and I never dated. We barely even talked. She is pregnant, though, with her second child. I wasn't sure it was her at first. It turned out she had seen me and was equally unsure. Her face lit up when I asked if she was who I thought she was, which was definitely a relief to me. I was hesitant to ask in case I had the wrong person and these kinds of meetings can be awkward when two people who never knew each other all that well run out of things to say. Luckily, we never did.

We gave the basic updates of what we've been doing. She went to A&M and changed majors a couple times before relocating to Houston and having their first child. They just bought their first house and she's going back to school next year after the baby is born. I told her that I'd gone to the University of Houston and lived here in one part of town or another non-stop since graduation. We talked about Clear Lake High School and Seabrook Intermediate, talking about various people that we knew.

"Did you know so-and-so?"
"The name sounds familiar..."
"She did so-and-so..."
"I think I knew of her though I didn't know her personally..."

Clear Lake had nearly 4,000 students, so it was hard to get to know everyone even if you wanted to. In truth, I really didn't care to anyway. Most of my friends went to school elsewhere, I didn't participate in any extra-curricular activities, and by and large never really liked it all that much there. She didn't do much in the way of extra-currilar activities (both our names appear in the yearbook once, it would seem), but she was in honors classes whereas I was in regular.

Her last name was Whitley, and mine being Whitlock we were in homeroom together throughout. Also, in junior high when class seating arrangements were done in alphabetical order, she invariably sat behind me. In Mrs. Neely's math class in the sixth grade, we passed out papers back to be graded. Apparently, I was such a good math student that she took great delight any time I got an answer wrong because it was so rare. Some years later, my skills (or interest or both) deteriorated to such a degree that my PreCal teacher would call me a degenerate.

I think we talked more last night than we ever talked in our four years at Lake. What I mostly remember about her was that she was always so nice. Attractive enough to be a part of the exclusionary in-crowd, she never went that route. Most high schools are cliquish, but posh Clear Lake was moreso than most. Particularly those that came out of Clear Lake Intermediate, which Pira and I did not. Part of me wishes that I'd been more engaged at CLHS like I ended up being at UH. Four years there and more of my memories from that period have to do with things happening miles away in Katy, Spring, and Houston. Pira recognizes me, but I wonder how many will at my ten year reunion?

And what was one of the first things she remembers about me?

"You were always so quiet."

Some things, I guess, haven't changed as much as I'd have liked.