like the movies

Summer of 1999. First day of high school orientation. I was, what, 14? "Painfully self-conscious" doesn't even begin to describe it. He was the leader of my orientation group, beautiful in the way that only unattainable senior boys can be -- olive-skinned, dark-haired, self-assured. I wasn't the only one who thought so; the whole female freshman population was in love with him by October. Because real life isn't like the movies, he did not ask me to prom.

Summer of 2007. I'd just graduated from college. One of my best friends was turning 21, and there was drinking to be done, so we were getting the party started on the steps of the birthday boy's apartment. And suddenly, over the salted rim of my margarita, there was Tony Caruso -- the senior god himself. He looked exactly the same. Maybe it was the tequila, but I found to my own surprise that I was now able to speak, walk, and breathe normally in his presence.

It wasn't until halfway through the evening, when someone in the group referenced our high school, that he turned to me specifically. "Wait. Did you go to [our high school] too?" he asked.

I couldn't suppress a grin. "You wouldn't remember it," I told him, "but you were actually my orientation leader. I'm Clare Alexandra."

"Clare?" You could see him trying to compare current-me with his faded library of mental snapshots from 1999. "Really?  But I think I would have noticed you..." He was actually flustered. He squinted at me a little more, and then finished with, "You...um. Wow. You grew up really nice."

I had a little moment, right there on Sherman Way in the warm summer air.  Tony Caruso had just looked at me with admiration, and had told me (in the most inarticulate way possible) that he thought I was pretty.  Sometimes real life is like the movies, after all.

Summer of 2011. I'd forgotten all about Tony in the intervening four years, but last week I stumbled across his Facebook profile. He's married now. (To a girl who looks a lot like me, if we're being strictly honest here.) And this story doesn't really have a point, except to say that I had another little moment, looking at his picture and remembering the cinematic summer night when he thought I grew up really nice.  If I was a motivational speaker, I'd tell all the high school girls that story.