It's a small world after all, and an uneventful one at that.  So there’s this other girl at my work and it turns out that she’s a girl I knew way back from elementary school.  And I mean way back like in 2nd or 3rd grade when I was a triathlete and ruled the playground during recess.  I dominated the handball courts, reigned as Four Square king, and weathered tether balls with haymakers so devastating you might as well have just called me Rocky. 

I was also fat.  That's probably the only real thing out of all that, the fact that I really was really fat, and there was no mistaking that.  Yeah I was fat…and the only Rocky in me was rocky road.  I sat on the swings by myself with cookie crumbs on my shirt and smeared chocolate stuck in between my teeth as I watched the skinny kids play on the blacktop.  But hey, at least I could swing higher than them.

Anyways, so back to my chance encounter with an old buddy.  I don’t know if she really was my buddy, in fact, I think we were enemies.  She had the same last name as me and that disgusted us both, enough to make us gag whenever someone asked if we were brother and sister.  I never understood why it offended her so much to the point where it seemed as if she wanted to destroy anyone who thought we were related.  And I’m sure she possessed a burning desire to slam me against the lockers and steal my milk money, but I’m also sure she just wanted an excuse to touch me and flirt with me.  She called it hatred, but I knew it was really lust that fueled her passion …boy was she crazy.  To tell you the truth, I wasn’t that flattered either to be affiliated with some girl with “koodies”.  Koodies?  No thanks, I would have rather eaten my kudos bar.  Besides, for her to be even remotely associated with me should have been an honor…she must have been confused, or crazy, or both.  I mean come on, I was a pretty funny guy.  And humor coupled with my chubbiness made me jolly and likeable.  That must have been it, she probably liked me and was bitter that I didn’t give up the goodies to her and told her to “keep on looking cuz they stay in the jar.”  But hey,  I definitely wasn’t gonna give up the goodies for koodies.  Anyways, with a rivalry like that, we might as well have just been siblings.

Ok so really this time, back to my chance encounter.  So we never really interacted much throughout elementary and middle school and afterwards I escaped to a different city, so I never thought I’d ever talk to her again. And I didn’t…until we just so happened to end up working at the same company.  The company’s called CGI-AMS.  Who? Exactly.   I still don’t even know what the CGI part stands for, it’s some french acronym but I don’t know french, so what’s that got to do with me?  So as if ending up at some company that I've never heard of wasn’t enough, I end up working with an old classmate from back in the days that I never heard from.

But anyways, when we saw each other, we didn’t run across the office with arms wide open, leap over desks and chairs, and catch each other in the air in an embrace of rapture as if we were long lost best friends, because we really weren’t.  It was hardly a breathtaking reunion, if a reunion at all since she didn't even remember who I was at first, which really pissed me off.  I obviously didn’t expect her to recognize me of course, since I underwent a dramatic metamorphosis from a chubby caterpillar to a dazzling butterfly.  But she could have at least remembered that we went to the same school and shared a tumultuous history, unless I traumatized her so bad that she blocked out that memory.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.  It was supposed be like how it is on those “Look At Me Now!” talk shows where some guy who used to be a loser/geek or fatty comes back 20 years later to flaunt his new look and impress the girl he had a crush on.  Well I definitely had a new look and she definitely wasn't my crush, but I definitely wanted to strut my newfound goods.  I look drastically different from how I did in elementary school and that should have elicited somewhat of a shocked reaction from her. 

But she tried to play it off all nonchalantly like “Oh you went to Travis too?”  Are you kidding me?! Way to rain on my party…what a bust.  But maybe she was just trying to act all calm and cool and unruffled by my resurrection in my new form…she was always trying to be part of the cool crowd, but she never made it like I did.  Or maybe I just made her so nervous she didn’t know what to do with herself.  Whatever it was, it was extremely awkward and abnormal.  Anyways, I’m sure she remembered.  How could you not remember me?  I was the fatty.  I was easily noticeable back then, but hardly memorable I guess.  I was a sweet kid, but the memory itself, if anything, is bittersweet…just like the chocolate I stuffed my face with.