Party of 2

My first girlfriend was Amber, and blonde, and white. We were 15. I was a junior and she was a freshman newly transferred from wherever it is that beautiful white girls run amok before they're shipped off to the next relatives in the chain. She once professed to love me in rhebus form, by scrawling our names on the board in her aunt's classroom with a heart in between. We kissed exactly once, an event that caused me to miss my bus and walk home with a strut in my step for about 15 blocks. She also invited me to her birthday party at a bowling alley, where she then proceeded to ignore me the entire night. The next day, I got the message from her friend that we were broken up. That's a lot for a person to experience in five days.

I saw her about two years ago while visiting my parents for Charro Days, a Brownsville holiday in which kids get one and a half days off of school to partake in parades and watch their parents consume 4 dollar beers at Sombrero Fest. She did not look very good. I don't think she noticed me; I have morphed into one of those people who somehow never get recognized by their high school peers. I immediately had the urge to go up to her and strike up one of those underhanded revenge conversations you only dream about in high school. Basically, an excuse to throw the relative greatness of my life in her face, like a much more bitter version of the country song "Unanswered Prayers."

But it would have done me no good. My years spent touring in a band might seem like a ridiculous waste of time to her, and I know my intellect never really excited her. These are qualities that I LIKE in people, but I can't count on them to convince another person of my relative worth. Even though I won, she will always win. Ultimately, I was the one fretting over initiating a conversation with a girlfriend I had for a week, while she was probably totally content remembering me as some minor detail in her life, if she remembered me at all. After processing this information in my head during the 4 seconds it took me to walk past her, I was content to let bygones be bygones, and sip on my 4 dollar beer.