New acquaintances often ask, “Have we met before? You look so familiar.” Strangers constantly stare at this warm, normal looking fellow when he is anywhere in public. In line at the grocery store, on the subway, at a baseball game, at restaurants, in the men’s room at a Burger King in Terre Haute, Indiana.

While eating alone at Sbarro’s sometimes he can see in his peripheral vision somebody’s grandmother quizzically studying his face. It’s only a matter of time before they gather enough nerve to tell him that, “you look exactly like my grandson. Especially from the side.” He will have to sit there forcing a smile and feigning interest while his delicious slice of supreme pizza gets cold as Ethel tells him about how her grandson is in graduate school at Stanford, or just got a job in D.C., or how young Dexter got a promotion at JP Morgan.

When trying to talk to a pretty girl at a party or at a bar, most likely a girl too pretty for someone possessing his common looks should talk to, this nameless girl with blonde highlights and a Burberry handbag will often interject before he even has a chance to honestly humiliate himself, “Oh my God, you look just like a friend of mine back home! That’s so weird. You look just like him. Jenny, come over here! Doesn’t this guy look like Dave Jermaine? Who? You know, Dave? He was the year ahead of us at South? He hung out with Mike and them. Oh my God, he does? Are you guys, like, brothers or lost cousins or something?” This giggling conversation will usually drift into some anecdote about how they got drunk one time with the guy Elwood looks like and somebody puked on her Steve Maddens and the other girl hooked-up with that hot foreign exchange student who wasn’t really that hot, but a little accent goes a long way. They’ll finally notice that he has left their presence long after Elwood has told his friends that it happened again.

He didn’t know what to say when this started happening to him. His friends told him that it was a golden opportunity for him to get “in there”. So he tried replying wittily when a young lady thought she recognized him, “Brad Pitt, right?” The self-deprecation and intentional goofiness of this joke was lost on the first five lassies. Eventually, he would reply, “Oh yeah,” and then try to change the subject. He never did find a way to turn his familiarity into a way of getting laid. It became a hindrance.

Countless times, in a crowded room, someone would yell another fellow’s name at him. “Greg!” “Greg!” They would yell until that point of irritation and embarrassment where everyone else in the room was looking at them except the person’s whose attention they were trying to get. When they’d finally approach Elwood, red-faced from yelling and drawing unwanted attention to themselves they’d realize that indeed he was not Greg, Smitty, Ben, Stefano, Rick, Jenkins, the guy who works at their local 7-Eleven, that dude from their chemistry class last semester who’s name was momentarily not registering in their mistaken minds, or Mauricio. They’d laugh and say, “Sorry, I thought you were my friend so-and-so.” Continuing to laugh and relate to their friends how they, “totally thought that dude was that other dude,” Elwood, taking another sip of his red, plastic cup filled with watered down domestic beer would drift into obscurity near a speaker blasting some retro-Eighties tune underneath one of the many Jim Morrison posters.

And it didn’t stop with people thinking he was an old chum, or reminiscent of an old chum. There was something deeper about his familiarity to others. Some sort of biological or spiritual comfort to his non-threatening countenance. Something safe in his slim frame and average height and weight. An intangible quality exuding reassurance with his white skin, blue eyes, blond hair, straight teeth, right-handedness, and over all moderate good looks.

Strangers often felt the urge to ask him for directions. No matter the size of the crowd, or whether he was listening to his favorite sad music on his iPod, or he was engrossed in the third chapter of a book that he thought would make him smarter, they would always choose him to ask, “how do I get to F.A.O Schwartz? Where can I catch the 6 train? Is there a Barnes & Noble in this neighborhood? Where’s a good place to eat around here? Have you heard of Porcini’s? Do you know how to get there? How’s the soup there?” In places unfamiliar to himself, where he was as lost as a toddler at a grocery store, other travelers would ask him if he knew the way. In foreign lands, to other Americans and Brits and people who use English as their lingua-franca when traveling he, for some reason, looked like a local or at least someone who knew his way around, “Hablas Ingles? Sprechen Sie Englisch? Parlez-vous anglais ? Muvlite anglicky? Parlate inglese? Você fala o inglês?”

Others would insist and demand, or ask in an irrefutable way that he perform random acts of small favors for them, “Can you take our picture? Can you hold this for a second? Do you mind if we get in front of you? Can you make sure no one takes our seats while we go to the bathroom and don’t return until halfway through the credits after about thirty people will ask you if these seats are taken and then walk away annoyed? Are you getting off at 96th St. too? Could you carry this bag to the top of the steps for me, it’s so heavy and I’m so old!? Could you hold my spot in line for me while I go and find the Low-Fat Wheat-Thins? I grabbed these Ranch Flavored ones by mistake.”

“What’s that dude’s name that’s in that god-awful flick about how they had to drill to the center of the earth in order to save it?” Elwood asks.

“I don’t know if I never saw that one, but I do know what you’re talking about. I think that film came along at the tail end of the disaster film renaissance of the late Nighties and early Naughts.”

Elwood and Matt are ignoring the preposterous 55mph speed limit on I-95 on their way to an early August Phillies’ game trying to figure out who the black guy was in “The Core.” It’s the last season at the Vet. Veterans Stadium, one of the few remaining structures that was a crumbling monument to the failed architectural philosophy of the 1970’s known as the Multi-Purpose Stadium. You could have baseball games, football games, and concerts all at one venue. The problem was that since it was designed for all of these purposes, it didn’t really work for any of them and ten years after Camden Yards in Baltimore ushered in a new era of sport-specific, downtown-located, nostalgia designed stadiums bearing the name of the highest bidding bank or electrical company, Philadelphia was going to get a new stadium for football and one for baseball. Most people of the Delaware Valley despised Veteran’s stadium and couldn’t wait for it to be demolished. It was easily the worst large, professional sporting facilities, if not in the world, then in North America at the time of it’s demolition. In addition to being a hideous hunk of concrete, fans, players, and coaches were constantly getting injured. A gaggle of fans were injured at an Army/Navy football game because of a faulty railing and fell from a dangerous height onto the concrete Astroturf. The elevators didn’t work. There were random puddles in the hallways that many a player and coach slipped on and caused performance hindering injuries. A group of former cheerleaders sued the NFL because there were holes in the wall separating the visiting teams’ locker room and the cheerleaders’ that were being misused for tantalizing peeping. Countless players had their careers shortened or immediately ended because of field-related injuries. Every baseball and football season saw a number of players make an unchallenged routine cut and fall down in anguish only to be wheeled off the field in a stretcher rousing a positive thumbs-up with tear-filled eyes on his way into the tunnel. Only to learn later from x-rays and CAT-Scans that he had suffered a “venue-related” concussion, separated vertebrae, torn ACL, MCL, high ankle sprain, broken leg, or broken toe and probably wouldn’t be able to play the rest of the season and possibly never play at a competitive level ever again. Diving catches caused broken wrists and concussions. Routine tackles paralyzed and killed.

Even though Elwood and Matt hated the place too, it was still the first place they ever saw a professional baseball game or a football game. Despite their own admission that the place was terrible, more than an architectural abortion, an architectural assault on the soul, it was still the place their fathers took them when they were little and told them about the game and bought them hot dogs and pretzels. It’s where they listened to the drunken hecklers and gained that unique Philly skill of booing and cheering equally for their home teams.

This is an experience that most Americans males have and they owed this particular visit to nostalgia and to their pasts, to the kids they used to be that didn’t really notice how crumby of a stadium it was. They owed this trip to a time in their lives when the game mattered more than how good your seats were. You brought your glove no matter what. They went to the game to pay homage to a time before you could see if your fake ID could scam the Bud Light guy or if there were any good looking girls at the game, or before it was a business trip and your company had a sweet club house or box seats. They it owed to a brief moment where Now was truly the only thing that mattered. When there was nothing to compare the experience to. There was only newness.

“Not Stanley Tucci or Aaron Eckhart. The black guy. Who…what’s his name?” Elwood demanded an answer banging the steering wheel in frustration.

Matt, unabashedly chubby, sporting a buzzcut and blessed with perfect vision utters, “um…Delroy Lindo!” Matt had grabbed the name out of the air. He was better at remembering names than Elwood, than most people. Elwood remembered faces, mostly.

“Yeah, Delroy Lindo. I saw his ass at Tom’s Restaurant, the Seinfeld diner, the other day having a pizza burger and orange juice at the counter. That’s like the fourth quasi-famous star I’ve seen this month. Are famous people everywhere in the city or do I just have some preternatural skill of observation?”

“I’d say both Column A and Column B are at work in this instance.”

They finally make it inside the stadium about halfway through the top half of the second inning after nearly an hour of parking, walking, and standing in line to buy their tickets. Phillies 0, Marlins 4. Their tickets were $7 dollars each for the 700 Level, the nosebleeds.

While buying their tickets, some energetic college-aged rapscallion with an old Pete Inciavilla jersey, most likely some mental defect from Delaware, scaled the fence/wall right next to the hardly moving ticket line like he was a world-class indoor rock-climbing-gym climber. He scurried up with the quickness of a squirrel. It was over before it started, but it lasted long enough for the other cynical and often heart-broken Phillies faithful standing in line to cheer him on. “Go Spiderman!” someone yelled in an unmistakably hideous Philly accent, an accent that you feel like you have to take a shower after hearing. Once the traversing adventurer climbed over the railing and entered the opening onto the ramps that connects the seating levels, he disappeared down the corridor of the 200 Level like a drop of water in a puddle. Matt and Elwood laughed at this entertaining endeavor amazed by the audacity and gumption of the young climber. Jealousy was not distant from their laughter. It was one of those risky things that they often thought about doing. It looked so easy. You just had to have the balls to do it. You either had to be too dumb to care or smart enough to know when precisely to take the risk. Elwood’s intelligence resides somewhere between.

They planned on sneaking down to the lower level, Matt and Elwood, if the game was still worth watching in the later innings, or even if it wasn’t worth sticking around for because the game is truly proportionately better in relation to how close you are to the action.

Matt brought his binoculars so they could scout out from their perched position the best section to sneak into. They evaluated a section’s sneakabilty by two factors, seat availability and strictness of the section’s usher. Their move always was made in the fifth inning.

After fighting the urge to buy 72oz sodas for the express purpose of the commemorative cup, they finally settled into their seats: Matt with his sneakers on the armrests of the chair in front of him, Elwood with his chin in his hands. As Matt talked about how much he loved his new job in Chicago and Elwood complained about the meringue lessons his upstairs neighbors seemed to give every other night until 2am, the summer sky was changing from blue to purple to orange to red as the sun set over the next two innings. The stadium lights gently heated up and took over the sun as the main source of light for the field like a long, slow cross-dissolve. A slight breeze and the approaching darkness eventually converted the temperature from oppressive to tolerable to unnoticeable. This is why they came. To remember past games where, in their minds, the conditions were exactly the same. To sit in these uncomfortable blue seats that were once red and yellow. To eat a hot dog or pretzel and talk about the players stats and nicknames. To throw ridiculous sports cliches back and forth to one another seeing who could remember the most inane, “around the horn, grand salami, fielder’s choice, turn two, retire the side, south paw, chin music, in his wheelhouse, frozen rope, hum dinger, seeing-eye single, can of corn, web-gem, effectively wild, coming off of Tommy John surgery, ducks on the pond, rice cakes on the table, the bottom fell out of that curveball, like it fell off a table, and humped back liner”. But also to boo and cheer. Mostly to boo because that’s what you do at Phillies’ games.

They also did it to remember this instance. Pre-nostalgia. Loss of the present. Like visiting an old friend, or rarely seen family member and the focus of all your discussions is about how much you’re going to miss each other.

Alas, girls are the final reason they came. The past, the game, and girls were why they were here. Girls don’t go to professional football games, basketball games or hockey games and if they do they’re all bundled up or with their boyfriend that dragged them there. Baseball games and summer concerts is where the breasted sex came out. They could come with guy friends and pound beers and cheer on the hottest looking, poorly hitting left-fielder with a bad throwing arm. Or some brave ones could actually come to the ballpark by themselves.

Matt and Elwood’s favorite part of the game since they were thirteen was when the girls had to get up and go to the bathroom or get some snacks and they could traipse in front of hundreds of riled up young men as they made their way from their aisle to the tunnel. Acting out that delicate balance of performance that communicated, “we don’t want you looking at us, yes we do, no we don’t, oh stop, etc.”

Matt, with the aid of his binoculars, debates between sneaking down to the section with the oh-so-adorable, yet negligent old-timer who took his stadium ushering job as a way to stay active after retirement and the thirty-something, irascible, African-American mother of three who could give two shits about this fucking job’s section. Elwood, with his astigmatism and myopia correcting Bausch & Lomb contacts busies himself with the pleasurable task of espying the passing and sedentary females ages 15-30 in their own section. Displeased with the crop of gals sitting below him and within his peripheral vision he takes a gander behind to see if he’s missed any notable notables in the vicinity. Turning around he is pleasantly shocked at being eye-level, three rows back, with a pair of firm young breasts squeezed snuggly into a banana-yellow t-shirt that is either naturally worn down or pre-worn. Elwood then looks up in the hopes of finding a pretty face to accompany the lovely petticoats. A pretty face is what he finds, but he also finds a pair of light brown eyes staring directly into his blues. Startled, he spastically turns back to the game, heart pounding out of fear and embarrassment, accidentally elbowing Matt in the back of the head.

“What the fuck, man? Do you have tourette’s or something?”

“I just got busted,” he says through nervous laughter.

“Ha Ha,” Matt responds deliberately for comedic affect. Matt looks back to see the potentially offended party for himself. “She’s still looking at you.”

Elwood’s face now rests tightly in his hands. He can feel his face growing like a big red hot air balloon.

“She knows you’re still here. You can’t hide in your hands. The back of your head’s just as guilty as the front. You should go talk to her.”

“What?”

“Yeah, she’s still looking over here. Oh, wait a minute, now she’s laughing at you with her friends. Hi there,” Matt gives a wave. Elwood tries to grab Matt’s hand, but his effort only exposes his face so he allows Matt to continue with his salutations. After rousing a few giggles and waves from banana t-shirt’s friends, he turns back to Elwood.

“You have to talk to her,” Matt pleads.

“What the fuck would I say? I noticed you have great tits. Wanna bone?”

“Nah, just be honest. Say something original, something she’s never heard before like, ‘ you know what, baby, odds are I’m going to be jerking-off to the thought of you tonight.’” Elwood cracks a smile. “It’s much better than that shit some guys try to pull, ‘Yo, let me holla’ at you’, ‘I’ll be thinkin’ ‘bout you, baby.’ What is that poop, anyway?”

“It’s not even a question. I don’t do that. These things are better left to guys who wear wife-beaters and gold chains and have evenly tanned gym rat bodies. They utilize their glistening gelled hair and immaculately white sneakers to stun their prey,” Elwood explains.

“That’s exactly why you need to do this. You’re not getting any younger. Plus, she’d never expect it. When are you going to start taking control of your life,” pleads Matt.

“Save the motivational speech for the next assembly. We’ve been saying the same thing since we were sixteen and we’ve never changed. You know you wouldn’t do it either.”

“Your loss. She’s fine and I’d venture to say not entirely out of your league either.” Matt looks back and gives banana t-shirt another look. He gives another huge, girly wave to her and her two friends. She smiles back and waves.

A huge cheer erupts from the crowd. Three-run homer. Elwood labors out of his seat to stand and clap with the rest of his crowd. Fighting better judgment and allowing instinct to win out, he braves another look behind him. Eye-contact. Held for an uncomfortable moment. It’s only eye-contact. He tries to smile but she looks away before she can see his nervous attempt.

The next batter lines out to the shortstop. “Let’s move down,” Matt says, “I spotted this old coot of an usher who’s just sitting down in his section eating peanuts watching everyone pass by as he tries to tell some people about when people will stop calling the Korean War the Forgotten War.”

“I don’t know, Matt. I don’t feel like moving. Aren’t you comfortable where we are?” Elwood says to the field, not looking at Matt.

Matt begins to plead his guess, but before he says anything he waits a beat. “Yeah, fine.” They stay.

Two innings later Elwood could feel the sting of her eyeballs on his back like Superman’s heat vision. Like all the other girls he’d seen at baseball games and wished he had the confidence to approach, she was too pretty. Prettier than he deserved. He’d go over the possible scenarios in his head every 1.7 seconds while sitting there with a knot in his stomach and his pits perma-sweating, of what would happen if he got up and went over to her and tried sparking a conversation. There were so many different ways it could go down, but ultimately the worst-case scenario always seemed the most logical and likely. Some how he would find the courage to lift his skinny ass out of his seat feeling like he weighed about a deuce and a half. He would get over to her whilst trying to not exist for the time it took to get from his seat to her. Then standing awkwardly next to her while she and her friends were in the middle of a consuming conversation about some celebrity gossip or perhaps some gossip that actually occurred in their lives and he would have to interrupt them. “Hi,” he would say timidly. They wouldn’t hear him at first, so he would have to nearly shout to make it known that he was hovering over them, “Hey, there!” Startled, the girls would look up at him, probably in the midst of laughing. Maybe one would spill a drink. Or one would be in the middle of applying mustard to her hot dog and spray it all over her white, spaghetti-strapped tank top. Undoubtedly, the sun would be directly behind him and they would have to squint almost to the point of shutting their eyes to see this goon standing over them. After a ridiculous pause in which all the girls stare at him judgmentally like a tribunal in some small village in Africa in which Elwood has been put on trial by the village elders for allegedly stealing his neighbor’s prized goat, he would most likely say, “so, you guys enjoying the game?” At first they would try to be nice. “Sure,” they would say. Thinking of nothing better to say he would ask where they’re from and where they go to school, if they are still in school, and maybe he’d get a little conversation going for about five minutes because one of the girls goes to the same college as one of Elwood’s friends, but they don’t know each other, so the conversation dies after some nervous laughs and throat clearings. Keep in mind he’s still standing above them, never feeling comfortable enough to take a seat. Frozen. The girls have to stare at the field paying more attention to a baseball game than they ever have in their lives because a) he remains standing in front of the sun and b) he universally makes everyone nervous who talks to him. Elwood eventually bids them adieu after two batters because he can think of nothing else to say. Twenty-three years of life and he can’t think of one thing to say. Who knows if it’s the fear of sounding clichéd or obvious or maybe he truly has a legitimate phobia of women that needs medical attention? Or maybe he’s just fucking stupid and really has nothing to say. Nonetheless, he’ll leave without saying goodbye. He’ll simply slowly turn around and creep away.

This does not happen, but surely it would.

An important fact that needs to be known about Elwood L. Wood, a fact that will be more important to this man’s tale than probably any other useless detail that I’ve been giving and will continue to give is that Elwood has a Liliputian bladder. But it’s more than that. If it was just a small bladder, his life may be infinitely more manageable, but this hindrance is coupled with a freakish metabolic rate making life damn near unbearable at times. When his body encounters any diuretic; beer, alcohol, tea, caffeine, what have you, his body will attempt to destroy itself by sucking every molecule of water that exists within it and expel it a murderous pace.

This is what is happening right now to Elwood. He has to get up from his seat. The last thing he wants to do. Masochistically waiting until the last possible moment before his kidneys explode. He has even undone his belt to relieve the pressure on his bladder. He knows that when he stands up he will momentarily lose control of his bladder. Praying it will not be enough to show through his khaki shorts, he stands up. Dribble.

Afraid to look at his crotch, for fear of that if other people see him looking at his crotch that they will look too. He has no idea if any wetness is evident. Grapevining out of his aisle he stoops over to make it appear as though he’s trying to not obscure other people’s view of the game, but in reality this leaning forward allows the front of his t-shirt to obscure a clean view of his zipper region. Slipping down the stairs to the walkway that circumnavigates the entire 700 Level aisle he is forced to parade in front of the entire section in order to make it to the tunnel that leads to the concession stands and human waste depositories. Walking in front of the section, he feels like he’s on a catwalk at a fashion show that’s being televised globally and he’s sporting this season’s new risqué, male crotchless panties. No one at all is looking at him. He glances down. No pee.

With the prospect of actually relieving his bladder Elwood begins to pick up the pace down the tunnel. Rounding the corner, he sees his object of desire. No, not a urinal, but a banana yellow t-shirt. If this were an Adam Sandler film he would accidentally run into her and they would both fall on the ground laughing and instantly become the love of one another’s lives. Luckily for us this does not happen and luckily for Elwood this does not happen because if he were to run into her, he would immediately commence micturating all over himself and her adorable yellow shirt. Also, she’s too far away for this to happen, so forget about it.

As they approach each other he tries to look without looking. She looks while trying to look. She is staring at him quizzically, like she’s doing long division in her head. Is she slowing down? Elwood thinks she may be slowing down. Making eye contact he smiles. She still doesn’t smile back. “Hey.” She is slowing down. In fact, she’s stopped.

Insert close-up of Elwood’s beet-red face.

“You look so familiar,” she affirms. Her eyes are a light brown. The color of the lighter shade of brown M&M’s that were discontinued to make way for the blue M&M’s. Her skin is slightly tanned and as smooth as if it had been airbrushed. Her nose is not small. It might appear big on another face, but it works for her. Adds to her. Her hair is straight, light brown with even lighter streaks that are natural so she doesn’t have that zebra-look most girls have. Elwood can’t see all of this now because he’s having trouble concentrating, what with the being nervous and having to piss like a champ.

“Where have a I seen you before?”

Heart in throat, “I was the guy you caught staring at your boobs.” Elwood can’t believe he just said that. That was pretty funny, he thinks.

“No, from before that.” Now she is smiling like the fact that he got busted checking her out is a non-factor. His familiarity has trumped his social faux pas.

“Your name is Elwood Wood, right?”

What the fuck?

“Yeeesss,” Elwood says slowly as if he might not be sure. Now is the time to say something witty. He’s had so many of these encounters of people thinking they know him, but he’s got nothing.

“Camp Wanatonka! 4th Grade!”

“What?”

“Camp Wanatonka, you simpleton. I was your girlfriend, remember?”

“Wholly fucking shit!” Elwood nearly pisses his pants. “Ana?!”

“Yeah! I can’t believe you remembered my name,” she exclaims, “this is nuts.”

“I know.”

This is incredible. How could this actually be happening? What are the odds? Is she a genius or something? How did she recognize him? He’s really going to pee his pants. You’ve got to understand, folks, his threshold has been breached.

Of course this is happening now, he thinks. Of course. One of the most amazing freak occurrences that has ever happened in the history of man and my fucking bladder is about to burst. Could I just let a little go to relieve the immediate pressure. She won’t notice that. No! I don’t have that much control. If I did that I’d end up blowing this. Pissing all over myself. Fuck, I’ll blow it if I go to the bathroom. Fuck! Why does my body hate me so much? Fuck!

“Wow,” she says. Elwood is standing with his legs crossed. Not grabbing his dick is taking some serious mental strength. Some Jedi mind shit.

“This is astonishing,” she says with a hint of well aren’t you going to say something?

“Look,” Elwood responds finally “this could be one of the most incredible things that’s ever happened in my life. Really,” he’s doing his best Micro-Machine Spokesman impression. “Most likely pivotal; however, I’ve never had to go to the bathroom worse in my entire life and if you get to know me you’ll see that my bladder dictates most of my actions in life, but if you want to keep discussing this bizarre, fantastic encounter with me with clean shorts, then I’m going to have to go to the bathroom. Will you wait for me? Come on, wait for me. If there’s no line, I’ll be back in 90 seconds.”

Laughing, “go take a whiz for Pete’s sake. I’ll be by the TCBY stand.”

Turning to run, Elwood dribbles a little. His boxers are now wet, but it doesn’t show through all the way to his shorts. He has been blessed on this day.

There is no line for the urinals. His belt and zipper are undone five feet into the bathroom. And he starts pissing before he’s within a reasonable distance to the urinal. My god. Sweet, sweet relief.

While trying to hide his penis from potential onlookers as he urinates, he remembers the last thing Ana said. He didn’t know that the decrepit, Veterans Stadium had added TCBY to it’s snacking repertoire. “Sold,” he says to himself.

She really is waiting there by the TCBY stand when he comes out. In snug lo-rise jeans and Reef flip-flops and of course the banana colored t-shirt, she stands there with a waffle cone of ice cream. Real ice cream. Mint-Chocolate-Chip. Not the country’s best yogurt.

“Sorry about that,” Elwood says sheepishly.

“Ain’t no thang,” she quips, “What are you going to get?”

“What?”

“Ice cream. What’s your pleasure?”

“Oh, um, I will be having Vanilla.”

“Vanilla? Go ahead, plain Jane.”

“What? Vanilla is not plain. Just because it’s white doesn’t mean it’s plain. Much like myself.”

“Ha, ha,” she gives an honest robust laugh. Not an affectation. It’s not raspy, or giggly, or cackly. It’s a warm, satisfying laugh.

“You know, the vanilla bean is an exotic spice. Nations have fought wars over it.”

“What wars?” she asks playing along.

“The Vanilla Wars of course. I mean, the British Empire enslaved nations for centuries in order to procure the control of this magical bean.”

She actually laughs more. This is unheard of Elwood’s life. He rarely can make a stranger laugh or hold their attention. Never mind the fact that this is a prepared statement that he’s used before. At least it’s his own and she’s enjoying it.

After he gets his ice cream, they stand in the corridor because there is no place to sit.

“So you still haven’t answered my question. How did you remember my name?” she asks.

“How the hell did you remember mine, or even recognize my face?” Elwood retorts.

“How could you not remember someone whose name is Elwood Wood?”

“Fair enough. I’ll have to thank my parents when I get home.”

“Plus, I have this picture of the two of us on this canoe. I’m smiling this huge goofy smile and you have this look of panic on your face and we’re sitting about as far as away from each other as possible on that middle seat. My parents thought it was so adorable that they had it framed and it’s on a table in our family room. When people come over they always ask about it. It’s a real conversation piece. I see your face all the time.”

She exudes a confidence and kindness that Elwood has never felt from a girl his age before. They usually give off a sense of nervousness or meekness and somehow usually seem distracted, but this girl is talking to him like they’re old friends. She doesn’t hedge her sentences, with “um’s” or “like’s”. She talks like she’s had time to prepare.

“The reason I remembered your name was because that was a traumatic experience for me,” Elwood explains.

“How so?” she says with a slight chuckle.

“It was at that stage in life where you were ‘going-out’ (Elwood physically does the quotation pantomime with his hands) with someone before you actually got to know them or sometimes even spoke to them.”

“I remember I first saw you at this dance we had the first week of camp,” Ana states.

“Exactly, and one of your friend’s came up to me and said that one of their friend’s liked me and wanted to know if I would dance with you.”

“Of course I had my friends ask. Why would I do it myself?”

“Of course. So, I did, because I thought you were the best looking fourth grade girl at the camp already. I nearly threw-up from the excitement. Anyway, for some idiotic reason I was so nervous around you that I never talked to you again for the next week and a half even though we were going out. It’s one of the many things that I’ve regretted, but ironically really haven’t learned or improved from.”

“I remember being really mad at you. What was your problem?”

“I have no idea. I guess I’m just pathologically terrified of females. It’s been a constant struggle.”

They both take a break from the conversation to finish their ice cream. It is strangely comfortable, the silence between them.

“So, where does this go from here?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Where are you from?”

“New Town in Bucks County, but I’m just home for the weekend. I live in Brooklyn now,” Christine explains.

“Well, there it is. I live in Manhattan. Do you mind givin’ a brotha yo digits?”

Laughingly she says, “I’m going to have to ask you not to do that again.”

“Sorry. Never again.”

Elwood types her number into his cell phone and she does the same.

“I should probably get back to my friends. They probably think I got raped or something.”

“We can walk back together.”

“Splendid,” she says with an English accent.

Matt has a look on his face like he just turned on the TV and there some sort of invasive surgery being performed on the Discovery Channel when he sees Elwood and Ana walking together up the steps to their seats. Elwood and Ana say goodbye to one another and they both make their way back to their seats.

“What the…?” Matt asks.

“Do you want to try and sneak down now?” Elwood says standing over Matt.

“Yeah sure. As long as you wipe that fucking smile off your face.”

Elwood can’t.

I am Tim Spellman. The eponymous character is Elwood L. Wood. He is not me, but our lives will intersect from time to time.

OK. Here we go.