One of the other things I’ve noticed while going through Adam At Last, the blog I started when I was 20, is that my younger self was very good at preserving things my current self had no idea he would want back someday.

Twenty-year-old me wasn’t trying to create an archive. He was just telling the internet what happened.

Sometimes that meant announcing that I was going to bed and then returning an hour later to announce that I had not gone to bed. Sometimes it meant writing about music, work, god, girls, music, girls, and occasionally something other than girls.

And sometimes it meant turning a missed bus into an entire short story.

This post was called “kindly stranger.”

i opened today at 5:15. got off at 9:45 and walked to my bus stop on the other side of the mall across the street. the cold winter air felt good on my hand which was doused earlier with a large amount of hot coffee. inside the mall was warming up to cater to the people who were already strolling looking through chain gates and closed doors at the employees scheduled to open their respective shops at 10. walking up the steps to the food court i was greeted with the sizzle of the taco time fry pans. stepping up to buy a taco i was informed that they didn’t open for 8 minutes. walking away deciding that i wasn’t going to give money to them anyway, i headed outside to find my bus. it was scheduled to leave at 9:57 but was nowhere in site. so i waited around for it to show up. 15 minutes later i asked the time. “i have ten after 10” the other bus driver said. so i went back to the white board that told me the original time to see when the next came. 10:57. good, now i can go get food. into the mall i went again. with my zip-lock baggy holding my cash for the day in the form of pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters. i didn’t go to taco time. i bought a ranch burger from carl’s jr. as i stepped into line a girl, who i noticed outside, was in front of me. she turned to see who had just walked up behind her. when she did, she walked up to me and ruffled my hair and said “you have pretty hair.” i said thank you and put radiohead back on my ears. ordered my sandwich with the coins. went out and ate. five minutes before my bus arrived she showed up again and rubbed my head once more. smiled with her post-adolescent braces and said “pretty hair.” again i thanked her, then thanked God that my bus was now arriving. jumped on and paid. sitting down i was happy to be going home. on the way the heater came on. the warm bus air was not welcomed as much as the crisp outside air to my hand. i have no idea who that girl was, and am afraid to see her again.

adam.

There is so much happening here.

I opened Starbucks at 5:15 in the morning. I burned my hand with coffee. Taco Time refused to sell me food because they didn’t open for another eight minutes, so I retaliated by giving my Ziplock bag full of coins to Carl’s Jr. instead. My bus disappeared. Radiohead was playing in my headphones. A girl with braces touched my hair twice, and I responded by thanking God for public transportation.

Honestly? Excellent post.

Twenty-year-old me apparently believed the important part of this story was the mysterious girl who told me I had pretty hair. Forty-five-year-old me barely remembers her. I do remember the burn, however.

More specifically, I remember holding my hand against the cold window for the entire ride home because the heater inside the bus was so hot. That is the photograph still sitting in my head: my hand against the glass, the cold coming through the window and the overheated air around me.

The girl is in the post. The window is in my memory.

That gap is one of the reasons I’ve become so fascinated with Adam At Last. The blog remembers things differently than I do. It preserved what twenty-year-old me thought was worth telling a story about. Twenty-five years later, I get to bring whatever survived in my own memory and place the two versions beside each other.

Neither version contains the whole thing.

The old post gives me the mall waking up, the coins, the delayed bus, Radiohead and the girl with the post-adolescent braces. My memory gives me the cold glass.

Together, they give me the morning back.

Also, apparently 20 year old me was just as preoccupied with his hair as 45 year old me is.

Some things don’t need to be recovered. They never left.