“We’re meeting for dinner after class tomorrow at Tarahumara’s. Do you know where that is?”

The look on my face informed them I did not.

“It’s down by Benvenuti’s,” one of them offered.

Again, they are met by my glassy-eyed stare. “Is that over by the Mazzio’s with the Spy Hunter machine?”

They return a confused look. “What’s a spy hunter?”

They act as if I’ve never been to Norman, Oklahoma, but the truth is I’ve been there many, many times. One of my best friends, Justin, grew up in Norman. The two of us met in the mid-80s, and even though Norman was 40 miles south of where I grew up in Yukon, I hung out in Norman with Justin quite a bit. Both my and Justin’s parents spent a lot of time and gasoline shuffling us back and forth, up and down I-35. More times than I can count, my parents would drop me off in Norman on a Friday and Justin’s parents would bring me home Sunday afternoon.

Justin owned a Honda scooter, which the two of us used to cover every inch of Norman. With Justin at the handlebars and me hanging on behind, the two of us frequently zoomed across town to shop at Shadowplay Records and stick our heads inside the skate shop on Campus Corner.

None of the kids in my class have heard of Shadowplay Records.

“Seriously? It where Tyson Meade formed the Chainsaw Kittens.”

Again, no response.

I skip over my tales of trading Commodore 64 software on 5 1/4 floppy disks (their heads would explode) and playing arcade games at the Gold Mine inside Sooner Fashion Mall and jump ahead a few years. I tell my story about the time my friends and I drove to Norman to see the Big Skin Hearts open for Ancient Chinese Penis play at a house party and, like a movie, literally watched people destroy the house. I talk about driving to Liberty D’s to see Klipspringer. In the early 2000s I drove to Norman to see Wesley Willis perform.

I might as well be speaking Martian to a bunch of Venetians.

So yeah, technically, I do know Norman, Oklahoma. It’s just that I know my Norman, not theirs.

And unfortunately for me, my Norman is gone.

Owen Field, late 1980s