Ghost Town

It started as I stood in line at the rental car company. I overheard the guy in front of me talking to the nice Advantage Rent-a-car lady. He said that he was heading up to Boulder for his fortieth high school reunion. My mind did some quick math: class of 1966. I was class of 1980. Still, I'm sure that we must have something to talk about. What were the chances that this guy would have graduated from the same high school I did, only fourteen years ahead of me?
And that's when it hit me: One Hundred Per Cent. I was standing in a rental car office five minutes away from Denver International Airport in July. Had I been in Minsk, or Bolivia this may have proved to be an odd coincidence. Instead, it was just he beginning of a flurry of recognition.
More simple math tells me that the first two thirds of my life (so far) were spent in this place at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. I was about to encounter a rush of memory that would not stop at the foothills, but compound until I had to go to sleep just to be away for a few moments. I found it easier to navigate around the city streets of Boulder than getting a stranger from my house to the Oakland airport. I had a story for each intersection: Here's where I lived in an apartment by myself. Here's the University from which I graduated. Here's my high school. Here's the street I used to take my friend and his girlfriend when they wanted to make out in my back seat. Here are the Flatirons.
I kept trying to share these flashes of deja vu with my son. He was busy trying to figure out exactly how the windows worked in the rental car.
That's okay. I'll be here for a week. I'll have plenty of chances to wallow in nostalgia.