A few days ago I was driving through the town I went to high school in. The weather was the kind that triggers a flood of memories – cool, gray-skied, slightly rainy. I was sitting at a traffic light and glanced into the plaza on my right. The neon open signs I saw made me a little sad. There was the diner I used to go to before school to sneak cigarettes with my buddies… where we would go for coffee and hangover breakfast the morning after field parties. There was the tanning salon I worked at for four years to pay for prom dresses and gas money. The drug store where I used to get pictures developed. I don’t go into any of those places anymore, but even if I did, they wouldn’t be the same. There would be different clerks and waitresses, different songs on the radio. I guess even when you do go home; it’s different when you aren’t a kid anymore. The sparkle is gone.
