Reviewed: Seeing my High School Crush’s Doppelgänger in Central Park

There we were at Strawberry Fields just settling into the peacefulness—trying to avoid loose hair from the dirty transient combing his mane, strands floating by in a light wind—when the tour group of Canadians arrived. For a while I was simply enjoying the sound of their lilting French--still avoiding the flying hair, yes, but also checking out fashion trends.

Then I saw the Canadian version of Amel*, young and smoking, with a really cool jacket, and gorgeous in that golden-tinged nostalgia of memory flooding back.

Murph said it was time to go and I didn’t want to. Yes, we had been there too long, and yes, the transient was weird and scary with the hair brushing…but I couldn’t leave. It was Amel all over again and I was back in time. Forget Joe, the ring on my finger. I was back to senior year, recounting in impassioned diary entries all the times he smiled at me. I was back to thinking all day about what I would say to him after school. I was back to daydreaming in Pre-Calc and telling my sister’s boyfriend to ask him if he liked me or not.

Who cares if that canadien wasn’t the real Amel and he was probably just-turned eighteen and didn’t seem to speak English and I was married. Who cares if, for one moment, you can go back? (…sigh…)

I made Murph inconspicuously take a picture and then we left.

93 Stars.

*Name has been changed.