I my mind’s eye I can see his face, but for the life of me, I can’t remember his name.

It was tenth grade, back when it was still cool to have sleepovers. I didn’t know at the time that most of my life-long friendships had already been formed, but that didn’t stop me from occasionally meeting new people and trying out new relationships.

I met the guy in science class after buying two tapes from him, one cassette (Kiss’s Smashes, Thrashes & Hits) and one VHS (Metallica’s Cliff ‘Em All). A mutual friend of ours told me later the tapes had been stolen from him, along with some comic books.

The guy came over and we spent some time playing computer games before watching movies. I had a VCP (video cassette player) in my room and had a tape with two movies on it, Weird Science and Howard the Duck. We watched both films. My strongest memory of the guy was how physically dirty he was. He had dirt on his jeans and shoes, and he smelled. We didn’t have a terrible time, but we didn’t exactly hit it off either. That was the only time we saw each other outside of school.

When my kids have friends come over to visit, I often wonder if these are kids they will be friends with for the rest of their lives, or if they’ll be like this guy, people that they’ll see once or twice and never see again.