There's a Penny on the Floor

Or, I Fondly Recall One Night When I Was 17 and Awesome

(For my high school physics teacher. Sorry I got a 94 on that test. No, there was no problem at home. I was just having a moment.)

I am thinking about moments. I am thinking about one specific moment.

Maybe it's the weather. The time of year. The event I just saw advertised that's celebrating the 20-year anniversary of an album I bought when I was a senior in high school. But I have moments on my mind.

This moment isn't about the aforementioned album and its band, though. It's about another band. Same local flavor. Same collection of yinzers. Their shows today attract the same women with giant hair drinking Coors Light or wine coolers or pink cocktails. They have teenagers or college students now, kids as old as they were when they saw This Band the first time around. They make poor decisions about leather clothing. They totter to the bar on heels higher than they should probably wear these days. The young strapping men they used to drag along with them to shows — when I was just 17 or 18 and they were well into their twenties — have tummies and receding hairlines and look like they'd rather be home watching TV than watching their wives fawn all over local pop stars approaching 50.

But 20 years ago — 21, in fact — we were all young and awesome. And I specifically remember the time my parents allowed me to go to see This Band live with one of my best friends. It was on a school night and I had a physics test the next day. But for once in my life I allowed myself to say fuck it, and I piled into my friend's car and off we went.

I have no poker face, so generally if I was pining over someone in high school they knew it. But there was one particular person, with whom I had zero chance of anything ever happening, for whom I pined in absolute, gut-wrenching silence. It's possible my best friend knew, and maybe my mom. But otherwise I kept such a ridiculous whim to my sad little self. He was a football star. I took MVP for the Quiz Bowl team. He dated a superpopular cheerleader. I … pined. He rocked the basketball court. I was meticulous about keeping accurate numbers for him in my stellar, completely non-dorky role as one of the team's statisticians. (For which I received a varsity letter, thankyouverymuch.) I'm not sure we ever even really spoke about anything other than basketball. He dripped sweat on my clipboard one time. I nearly swooned.

But this night, this moment I'm thinking about, he also went to see This Band. And he was pretty chummy with my friend, so we hung out with him and his buddy. And there was a moment — when This Band was playing one of their super-famous, everyone-sings-along songs — when he was standing right behind me. Close. I could hear him singing. And I could close my eyes for one split second and imagine that there was no cheerleader. That there was no caste system in high schools where he was on the top and I was nowhere near it. That maybe he actually knew on some level that I wasn't just super great at division, trivia and tracking rebounds. Maybe he could see all my awesome. Maybe he wasn't standing so close to me because he was tall and I was short and people were pushing him from behind. Maybe we were having a moment.

Then it was over. We bought t-shirts and went home. But I took that moment with me, that split second when we were both just kids from the same town who liked the same band and I could feel his breath on the back of my hair as he sang about a penny on the floor. That seems sad and pathetic now, but when I was 17 and he was 18, it was heaven. It was enough.

The next day, he went back to his cheerleader. I went back to Quiz Bowl and stats and broadcasting club and whatever play I was in at the time. But at one point we passed each other in the hallway, wearing our matching This Band t-shirts. He nodded at me with a little grin. And I nodded back with a small smile.

Another moment.

Physics test be damned.