Because I remember when I was you.

A conversation I overheard this past Saturday keeps popping up in my head. I thought about it while I was driving back to Chicago Monday afternoon. I thought about it while I was putting on my makeup the other day. I thought about it while I was waiting on a table last night. It just keeps popping in my head, uninvited, at random moments. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because it has nothing and everything to do with me.

I was out to lunch in Indy with my brother and his girlfriend. The restaurant was crowded, and the table behind us was a group of loud, giggly young women. My guess is they were freshman or sophomores at Butler—they all had that excited, freshly realized air of independence about them. From my seat, I was facing their table. While we were waiting on our food for what seemed like forever, I was getting increasingly cranky—a combination of being so hungry I was about to start chewing on the tablecloth, and the table of loud women. If one of them giggled one more time, I was going to throw a bottle of hot sauce at them. Basically, I was hungry. (If I’m this cantankerous at 25, can you imagine what I’ll be like at 65? Yeesh.)

Anyway, once our food arrived, I pretty much forgot about them, until I overheard one girl talking to the now silent group. She was talking about someone going through chemotherapy and how it had been really tough so far. “But the good thing is, she hasn’t gotten any mouth sores yet,” she said. By this point, I had realized this girl was talking about her mother. My sandwich, which had been absolutely delicious until I heard that statement, became tasteless. In that one statement, I heard how scared she was, and how much she needed her mom to be okay. I looked up, and the girl who’d been talking was directly across from me.