Nostalgia strikes at the oddest times

I was driving home from the movie theatre around 10:30 Friday night, cruising from stoplight to stoplight with the windows down and the radio up. After a long stretch of muggy nights, it was finally cool enough to raise goosebumps on my arms. A car pulled up next to me at a light, packed full of teenage boys goofing off ...

... and I'm 17 again, cruising Concord Pike with my version of Lloyd Dobbler after going to see a movie. We're in his mother's Celebrity, listening to the radio and talking to the other misfits on the CB he bought with the money he earned working as a grocery store bagger. I'm wearing my only "sexy" outfit, which was a tight-fitting black t-shirt (with a neckline low enough that my black bra would peek out if I wasn't careful which way I stretched) and a pair of jeans with a really cool black leather belt from Banana Republic. I can faintly smell the perfume I dotted on behind my ears, and the chill from the night air is raising goosebumps on my arms. He's holding my hand as we pull onto the twisty roads in the valley, back to the reservoir and the one-lane bridge where you have to flash your lights before you go across because you can't see the other side, and all the other landmarks I could never find on my own. We're getting lost and getting sort of found and realizing that it's 15 minutes to curfew and somehow we ended up in Toughkenamon and oh crap we'd better find a phone booth so I can call my parents.

Last night, almost 20 years after cruising Concord Pike and the valley, I drove home with the windows down, taking the longer way home on the road that winds down into our own little valley. I turned the radio up and drove with one hand on the wheel and wondered what had become of the grocery store bagger.

And I vowed to throw out that damn belt from Banana Republic, because really, 20 years is too long to keep an accessory, and in retrospect it wasn't that cool to begin with.