when nostalgia attacks

He grinned. It's a drive, he said.

It's fine with me, I replied.

The little car vroomed up the highway ramp. The little car, the car that completed his James Bond image, the little car he bought off the internet, the audi tt.

You just wanted me to see how swift this little car is, didn't you?

He turned to look at me with a grin. It's pretty sweet, isn't it? he said.

I settled back into the leather, stitched like a football at the seams, feeling, despite the contours and the classy comfort that I didn't belong in that little car.

We talked. The last time we saw each other was far away so we built a bridge with talk of people we know, family, movies, music, work, stuff.

Our conversation never lulled, like it does with people sometimes. He's too smooth for that. If nothing else, there was the car to speak of, even three years later it still amazes me, and he still delights in showing it off.

For breakfast, nostalgia. A little place, almost a shack, somewhere in the north suburbs, somewhere near where he grew up, but a little place he couldn't go as a high schooler and visited as a college guy. It was full of giggly, messy haired, abercrombie and fitch wearing, mouthy teenagers.

We waited for a table or pair of seats to open up and watched the activity. The back wall held the waitstaff (two fresh faced teenage girls) and the owner (a tall broad shouldered guy with boxy glasses and blonde hair, in his forties) the two cooks (thin, short Mexicans) who were picking slices of cheese off a tall stack, poking shredded potatoes on the grill, and handing off steaming plates to the girls.

On the plates, smoking piles of bacon, green peppers and onions, swimming in swiss cheese, held by a french roll cut in half. Lightly grilled hash browns skidded off the side.

That's the bacon loretta, he said, flicking his chin at the dish, which was held in the crook of the blonde's elbow. That's what we're getting.

A father and his two kids got up to leave and offered us their table. We'd been taking up tight space between the stairwell and the backs of the kids sitting at the counter stools, and there was a shuffle of feet and limbs to switch places with the family. Just when we'd settled into our seats, a gaggle of teens wanting to eat headed our way and squeezed into a table meant for two, so of course, Mr. Smooth had to offer our seats to them. They were amicable, and even glad.

Our table was about a foot away from the next, so we overheard a long conversation about the previous night from two teens who'd been to a party together. There had been vomit. And plenty of drinking. If they were older than eighteen, I would have been surprised. I tried to think about what I did in high school on a Saturday night...and maybe I was just a big nerd, but I never got drunk and the first time I ever puked was about a year ago.

Suddenly, I felt really old and really sad for the state of things. If these were the people I had to bank my future on, I felt like finding the nearest tall building and leaping. I was not amused by their bullshit, by their bigness, by their grown-upness. I wanted to shove my messy plate of crap into their laps and tell them to quit whining and wasting time and go do something.

I wanted to stand up in that restaurant and tell them that they had it good, that they could drive their parents' cars and drink their parents' booze and spend their parents' money on clothes that make them all look like preppy farmers, and they should not be sitting around on a Sunday morning whining about how hungover they were.

I began talking very intellectually, the sort of abstracty philosophical talk that I can get going into about making life what you want it, and suddenly, he interrupted me, said something about continuing it in the car, and we got up to leave. Right then, I realized that he was just like all of these kids, except he was ten years older, but he was no different, still living like life was being handed to him, having done a little bit of work along the way, his life was still as charmed and as carefree as these teenagers.

The kids next to us watched us like strangers, like we were their parents, theives, robbers, trespassers treading ground we didn't belong on. I felt their stares and wanted to give them some good Chicago crazy bitch stare back, full of the hatred I had for them, but they were just kids, kids with nothing better to do, kids that didn't really know what life was yet, and before long, they would know, and they were right, we were trespassing.

That's what makes me old, I thought, that I had a reaction and I stifled it, pushed it away, thought it out and abandoned it, choosing instead to be mute, dumb, lame.

We both promised to make this visit a habit, old times, good friends, well wishes, but I knew that he would not call me, unless I called him, I knew that I would not call him again soon.