People that matter, a little

It was a crisp October morning and I had decided to walk Dawn up the hill. The yellow-leaved tree across from Kennedy’s house was situated such that the low morning sun reflected directly back into our eyes.

As we climbed the steps, single file, up behind Melrose Place, two college women with slender legs and backpacks cruised on up past us. They were already well up the drive toward the Chancellor’s Residence when we reached the top of the stairs.

I commented that I couldn’t remember what it actually felt like to be their age.

Having dropped Dawn at Blake for her class, I walked along Jayhawk Boulevard, observing the sunlight on the trees and buildings and a trickle of students. I had turned toward home when I came upon a striking young woman walking toward the sun that was in my eyes. She had long dark hair, gray leggings, and calf-length boots striking a steady cadence on the sidewalk. I soon passed her by, but I had stopped to examine the frost on the dark red coleus leaves in front of Watson Library.

Nina – I’ll call her that, partly because I once knew a woman who unexpectedly came to mind named Tina when I was about Nina’s age. Nina walked up to me and spoke to me.

She mistakenly thought I might be with KU Maintenance and said she was supposed to write a story about skateboarders on campus. I told her I was rarely on campus but that I saw skateboarders on Mass St., and in the hundreds of times I saw them, they mostly got away with skating on those sidewalks.

She smiled at me, a gap between her teeth in a pretty face, a little unsure, I thought. But Nina said maybe she could make a story out of that; she had already gotten a bureaucratic brush-off about what they thought of skateboarders from official channels.

I told her of the time I had seen a group of skateboarders trying to pop their boards into the air and ride them along the concrete traffic barrier in front of the side door at the Eldridge Hotel. Police had been called and were in the process of sitting the young men down for a lecture or tickets or whatever, I didn’t stay to find out.

Nina had pulled out her digital recorder, to capture this bit of a nearly non-story. She politely took my name and spelling, and asked if it would be alright if she characterized me as a Lawrence resident. We walked a few steps together and I asked her if her story was for the Daily Kansan.

She said, yes, and then at the corner, she said it was nice to meet me, and I walked on down 14^th Street.

I listened to the receding cadence of her boot heels and thought about how she was young and pretty and persistent and unsure.

And I wondered whatever became of Tina.