Writing

“You’re the one from Dayton,” I say. “My name’s Mark.”

During a break in a graduate class in economic development, I offer my hand to this brunette. Which she takes.

“Melissa,” she says.

“What part of Dayton?” I ask.

Our hands do a light up and down and then let go.

“Riverside.”

I shake my head. Can’t place it.

“It’s in east Dayton.”

A few students in this room of forty had sniggered when Melissa introduced herself. On the heels of my, “I grew up near Dayton, Ohio,” she’d shared that she had as well, so it was “good to be together.”

“How about you?” Melissa asks.

“Well, I grew up in Xenia actually, though I went to high school in Dayton and hung out in Beavercreek a lot, around there.”

“Really? Where’d you go to school?”

“Carroll.” Which, I later recall, is in fact in Riverside.

Melissa smiles. “I went to Carroll, too!”

So we spend the next several minutes doing the usual bit when people discover they have a place or people or experiences in common: we build upon those commonalities by trying to match more commonalities. Melissa says she recently attended her class’s fifth-year reunion, while I don’t think my class even planned a fifteenth. I note that I played soccer at Carroll, and she updates me on this year’s sports teams — we’re both amazed that the football team has finally come around. We come up a bit short when hunting for common acquaintances, though we recall plenty of the same teachers: Sr. Ursula is still wearing those “Jesus sandals,” and Mr. Sens still eats the microphone when he speaks during school assemblies.

Then our economic development instructor reappears at the front the classroom. Just before I turn to head back to my seat, I smile, give a nod, and say, “Go Patriots!”

“Yeah, go Patriots!”  

I consider offering to carpool to Dayton or inviting Melissa to my family’s home for dinner. She just moved to town, so it’d be a hospitable thing to do. But I hesitate and offer neither. Even for a fellow Patriot, this feels a touch too forward.

Still, I do consider it.

I end up dropping the course for another, and I never see Melissa again. At least I don’t think I do. For the life of me, I can’t now describe anything about Melissa’s appearance beyond “brunette,” or tell you anything else about her. But I do know Melissa is a Carroll Patriot. And that really matters to me.