Truckin’

Memory is a funny thing. Some things we remember vividly, each and every detail embedded deep into our minds. Other things vanish quickly or over the course of our lifetimes, our subconscious deeming them not consequential enough to take up valuable head space.

There are also those memories that, with just enough outside prodding, flood back to our consciousness, fresh as the days they hark back to.

This is about Jack, a boy I knew quite well in childhood. We were friends as kids, but children grow and change, move on and mature, go separate ways as we all become adults and before you know it those childhood friends and the accompanying memories are a very distant but pleasant whiff of thought that is barely there.

Then out of the blue, something happens…

It was his gait, his way of walking. I didn’t even realize that I was conscious of it, back then or even now – until the moment the man came into view, walking casually down the sidewalk, strolling directly across my line of vision. It was a purposeful stride yet unhurried, as though not to miss anything along his way. As I was waiting in my car to pull out onto this main road a realization came to me, like a tsunami of memory flooding over.

It was Jack. I knew it instantaneously … by his walk.

Suddenly an explosive rush of other long-forgotten thoughts flew into consciousness: that distinct stride; his friendly, easygoing manner and quick smile; the way his hair fell across his eyes Beatles-style; the fact that he played baseball and seemed to always be on the way to practice; the red Stingray bicycle he rode everywhere, every day; that he would head home on that same bicycle once the street lights came on; the long and splendid summer days of our youth. All these memories bombarding me in a split second or less as I was attempting to merge into traffic and go about my day, decades later.

I pulled out onto the road turning left on the way to my errands, while the man responsible for those memories continued his purposeful stride down the road, heading right.

I was smiling.