Thirteen’s the charm
Well, so, tomorrow night will mark thirteen years since two young incipient geeks met in the dumb-terminal cluster in the Education building on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University and admitted that yeah, they were kind of, um, you know, attracted to each other, in a way, sorta.
Since I’ve got homework to do tomorrow, we went out tonight instead. It’s funny, the difference in the details we remember. He talked about the stairs down to the computer cluster, and the exits therefrom (was he really thinking about doing a cut-and-run?). I remember the sad little monochrome VT-100s and their grubby clickety keyboards. And the layout of the room, long tables and little aisles.
We both remember that the room was half-sunk into the ground so that the windows looked out on ground level into a row of thornbushes. And walking out of the cluster the next morning (after staying up all night talking) into a sunrise that was an outright assault on the eye, it was so bright.
I remember the notes he showed me, notes for an invented world, language notes, other notes. I remember being at once too sleepy and too wired by this new concord to assimilate much of what he was saying, though I did understand—dimly—that I was being let past the barbed wire and the guard dogs.
I remember he startled when I touched his shoulder. I remember he was too shy to meet my eyes.
And now it’s been thirteen years.