Pasta Interruptus

I remember having dinner in Louisville one night. I remember a lot of those dinners, my family has had a long love affair with the Italian restaurants just over the hill from Boulder. On this particular evening, we were dining at Luigi's. I was fourteen. I was in ninth grade.
When I got up from our booth to go to the rest room, I thought I recognized somebody at an adjacent table. It was my typing teacher. Well, he had been my typing teacher in eighth grade, now he was my wrestling coach. He had also been my football coach the year before, and he would be my track coach when spring came. I was pretty sure that he didn't see me, so I hurried back to the men's room without making eye contact.
When I came back, after I washed my hands of course, I slid back into the booth only to be greeted by my father's smiling face: "Say Dave, isn't that Mister Carnival over there?" I froze. I had no interest in making personal contact with my coach or typing teacher or anyone connected to my existence in the outside world. In this regard, I was the polar opposite of my father. Perhaps as a result of my father's gregariousness (he was on a first-name basis with half of Boulder County), I was painfully introverted.
Still, after considerable goading, after I had finished my spumoni, I got back up and made a winding path through the tables in the center of the restaurant until I found myself standing three feet away from the considerable profile of Mister Carnival. He was with his wife. He was chewing. I waited for a swallow. "Hey, Coach." Even though he was the typing teacher at Centennial Junior High, Mister Carnival liked it when kids called him "Coach."
For an instant, I thought he might hit me. Then a flash of recognition: "Caven? You out with your folks?"
It didn't occur to me to tell him that I had been kidnapped by circus acrobats and that he was my last chance of escape. Instead, I just said, "Yeah."
And then there was absolutely nothing else to say. I mumbled something about "enjoying your spaghetti," I meandered back to my seat and waited for my parents to finish their Chianti and pay the check. I hoped that next weekend we'd to to the Blue Parrot.