I had an eventful weekend roadtripping up to NorCal, stopping by Sunnyvale to visit college roommie Diana and spending a few days in Napa for a meal and wine tasting, and Calistoga for Eddie & Michelle’s small private wedding ceremony. I’ll write about that when I’m able to get my photos together.

An odd memory played itself in my head this morning on the drive to work. I was 19, with my first boyfriend in the passenger seat of his mom’s Mercedes, which he was driving. We were on a main street in the Monterey Park area. We stopped at a red light. I looked left at opposing traffic, which was also stopped at their own light. I noticed a guy driving a pickup truck and stared at him because he looked exactly like an older grownup version of my then-boyfriend (whom we’ll call Jerome). This is unusual because Jerome is very unusual-looking, to put it euphemistically. I was just blown away that they looked this similar. That pickup driver, within the first seconds of my stare, looked up and weirdly turned to his left, looked across multiple lanes of stopped cars between us, and made direct solemn eye contact with me. That lasted 4-5 more seconds as I gawked at who appeared to be Jerome in the future. It took this long for Jerome to turn to his left. He didn’t see me staring, but he sure noticed that pickup guy staring, because he said irritably, “What the hell is THAT guy staring at?!” as the light turned and we started to move forward again. I didn’t say anything, and he thankfully didn’t turn to look at me. It seemed odd and ironic that he didn’t realize he was staring at himself. How many people in the world looked like that?! I was lost in thought for a few minutes after that. What is this, a wrinkle in time? I thought. Did the space-time continuum fold back on itself and give us a glimpse of the two juxtaposed realities? And if that’s the future, I thought with horror, Where was I? And what’s with the beat-up pickup truck? I also wondered whether the future Jerome, when enough time passed and he became the guy in the pickup staring at the younger version of himself with the girlfriend in the front seat, would remember that he was on the other side of the stare back decades ago. The stunned look of the pickup driver certainly suggested he made such a connection.

This morning, I thought with amusement about young love. We really thought we’d be together forever in our early relationships. I never told Jerome about this because it was creepy to me at the time and he scared easy anyway, so I didn’t want him to freak out that I was missing from his future AND he did not appear to be as affluent in his adulthood as his parents made him in his youth (something very important to him). I wondered if now is the time of the pickup driver’s present. Of course, knowing now what I didn’t know then, it makes more sense. Where was I, why wasn’t I in the pickup next to him? I was (am) having the time of my life with my handsome husband taking trips and goofing off at home and having fun with friends both in traveling and in home get-togethers. I happen to know that Jerome, after we broke up, rebounded to his best friend’s big sister and ended up knocking her up. I heard something about her telling him that precautions weren’t necessary because it was “medically impossible” for her to get pregnant. She explained the pregnancy by telling him that he must have some seriously lethal sperm so he walked around proudly saying, “Yeah, I’m the man! I’m the man!” (Typical him.) They got married in a small ceremony in his parents’ church when their daughter was very young, and then lightning struck in the same place twice as she once again got pregnant. The lie must’ve been apparent THEN, cuz she got her tubes tied after the second one. His parents didn’t like the union, didn’t like the age difference (she is older), didn’t like the racial difference (he’s Chinese; she’s Honduran), didn’t like the fact that they clearly had premarital sex (the parents are very religious and always preached to him about keeping his hands to himself), didn’t like that she was big, wasn’t college-educated, didn’t have a lucrative or prestigious career, didn’t come from a well-off family. They also didn’t like ME cuz I wasn’t good enough for their son, despite the fact that I straightened him out, got him to stop smoking and drinking (he was underage) and helped get him transferred into UCLA, where I was a student at the time. I reviewed his admission essay, application, hooked him up with the right people for recommendation letters, etc. But as soon as he got with the big sister, they partied together, drank, he picked up smoking again, because she made it a point that she was going to be exactly the opposite type of girlfriend that I was. And of course, she got pregnant (whereas I left him a virgin). She also made up a bunch of lies about me and talked crap about me with Jerome, wanting him to hate me, because in their early dating stage he’d broken things off with her and tried to get back with me (I’d ignored his attempts, which you’d think she’d be grateful for, but it apparently gave her a complex). His mom also treated me like crap. I remember, toward the end of our relationship, my driving Jerome back to their home after a day of my showing him around UCLA so he could buy the proper books and things to begin school there, and seeing his mother on the porch. I walked up and greeted her VERY politely in Mandarin. She completely ignored me, looked the other way, and called out to someone on the other side of her, thereby dismissing me. I left very quickly after that despite Jerome’s begging me to stay awhile. She had a large part of why I ultimately broke up with him; I didn’t think their own parenting failures should’ve been my problem, especially when I was not being appreciated for all the efforts I had put into their son. And he had serious issues.

So yeah, karma did her thing. I know about his lifestyle from mutual friends, and I’m happy I’m not still there. But I kinda wish I could be there when future Jerome drives his pickup one day and stares across a crowded street at past Jerome, makes eye contact with past Cindy, and realizes that she knew then who he was.