Long ago on a night when it seemed as if I could touch the stars and melt in their light I told a girl to dream of me. My words fell into the air between us and floated away in the wind. "At least in dreams we could be together instead of separated by miles with only the stars knowing the truth about how lonely we each were and are."

I wonder how many secrets the stars keep or how many wishes are made on each star. Do the stars feel burdened by such wishes, hopes, and dreams? How many tears have been shed with only the stars twinkling in the sky to bear witness? Anyway, I never asked her to remember me largely in part because I consider myself a shadow and hardly worth a moment's notice. Oh such self-esteem I have. :)

I've never asked anybody to remember me, but as I sit here with my animal physiology notes in front of me and "Saints and Angels" playing I can't help but wonder if somewhere somebody does. Maybe the girl I used to play with who would always share her pound cake in lunch during the second grade thus starting my love of pound cake, Cathy, remembers me. I laugh whenever I think about Alan though I’m sure he has forgotten the basis of our friendship. Let’s just say that my kindergarten and first grade teacher was not fond of us as a pair. Fast forwarding to fourth grade I remember how I wrote my teacher that summer, and to this day I still have a picture of her dog Popcorn in the folder of “my past..” I also had a picture of the girl I met while at camp in that folder; we wrote one another for a few months after summer ended. I wonder what happened to her. Oh I can’t forget about Anthony, the boy I danced with at the dance that ended summer camp. He gave me his phone number, but I lost it somewhere between stuffing it in my pillowcase and the trip home. That was the first of three phone numbers I’ve ever received in my twenty years. It’s kind of sad in a way.

My “gang” in fifth and sixth grade probably forgot about me the second junior high began which is to be expected. The group of four girls in junior high who referred to me by my last name all probably vaguely remember the girl who counted down to every other weekend and wore turtlenecks and a black fake silk jacket except for Kristin who was always entertained when I spun stories about her and the love of her life that she had yet to meet as we walked around the track in gym. All four told me that I would go to Yale. We were kids; what did we know? I wonder if Jill remembers me. We first met one day in summer as I played catch in the street with my brother. We immediately bonded over the fact that our birthdays are the same, and when she saw my dresser she was amazed because she had the same one. That was the year we were both in softball together though on opposing teams. There's one awful picture of me in my uniform with a bat on my shoulder. Countless hours were spent walking around our subdivision, up and down the same stretch of sidewalk, as we talked about whatever happened to pop into our heads. I remember walking on a frozen pool of water in winter, telling her that “It’s okay. It won’t break,” and when she finally agreed to walk to the middle with me the ice cracked. She yelled at me the entire time as we both walked home with mud up to our knees. Good times.

Then high school. Maggie, Steph, my geometry teacher, Camille, Eric, Meagan, and Rach are all people I’ve been thinking about tonight. And now that I’m in college there’s a whole slew of new people who will only be in my life for an instant. Do any of them remember me? Will any of them remember me once our time here is through? I don’t know.

I know that there are too many people in the world which makes it is impossible to remember everyone that crosses your path. Still there are those individuals who touch your life in some way or maybe it’s just the little things like pound cake or walking for hours that add that something special to make it memorable. Am I memorable? I realize that in the grand scheme of things my existence is insignificant, but late at night when I’m looking at the stars I can’t help but wonder if somewhere out there someone is looking at the same sky and just maybe thinking “I remember her…”