THE ME I SHOULD HAVE BEEN

THE ME I SHOULD HAVE BEEN

We sat on the front porch of John Smith’s house. It was a Saturday morning and I’d stopped by to visit my old friend while I was in town on business. Over fifty years had gone by since we’d last seen each other. Even way back then, we’d not been close friends and the only reason I even thought about him was an announcement I saw in our college alumni magazine. I got in touch with him and he said he’d be “pleased as punch” to see me again.

Here we were. John scrunched himself in a porch swing and I sat in a rocking chair. The weather was cool, with a slight breeze. Good catch-up weather.

“Notice something about this house, Ed?” John asked after we’d settled into comfortable silence – the kind of silence where you feel like you can say nothing and it will still mean something.

“It’s nice. Well built. I like the porch.”

“It’s the only house on the block, really in this whole neighborhood, with a front porch. It was built in the 1960s during a time when front porches were deemed of no use. If you had a porch, it was on the back.”

As he spoke, I looked up and down the street. He was right. A covered front stoop was as much of a porch as one could see.

“I bought this house because it had a front porch. And it had a back porch. I could contemplate nature from the back porch and human nature from the front porch.”

I heard a garage door open on the house next door to John’s. A car emerged and passed on the street right in front of John’s house. He waved, but his neighbor apparently didn’t notice.

“He might have seen me, or he might not have. It really doesn’t matter. I paid my respects.”

“It’s a good custom.”

“To most of my neighbors, I’m just an old man. I might be invisible to them, but they are visible to me. Oh well.”

A boy rode down the street on a bicycle. Again, John waved and the boy did nothing.

“I have to feel that my wave means something, even if it isn’t acknowledged.”

“You’re still the philosopher, aren’t you.” My memories of John in college were slowly rolling back into my consciousness. He was quiet and bookish, I recalled. He was part of the little group I hung out with, but he never seemed to be totally connected to the group. The group did everything together. He did some things, but would skip out on others.

“I was too much the philosopher for my own good, I fear. I should have been more foolish.”

I laughed at a memory. “You got drunk once, I remember.”

John laughed back. “It was a fake drunk. I had maybe a beer and a half, and on a full stomach. But I did act the fool for a few minutes.”

“Maybe you should have been an actor – a brooding Shakespearean type perhaps.

“Too much stage fright,” John countered. “I know it’s the philosopher in me, but I do think about what I should have done with my life.”

I was surprised by that remark. John had never married, to my knowledge, but he had a nice life as a public servant, making judgements on unemployment claims was what he told me. I had been an accountant for a department store, which was not exactly thrilling. It helped support a marriage and children. And I met lots of interesting people along the way. I never regretted a day. John seems to have.’

“I hope your life has been happy.” I realized as soon as those words left my mouth how morbid they must sound.

“Ed, when you go by the name ‘John Smith,’ your identity gets lost. Just like my wave gets lost.” John stretched a leg, then returned it to the swing. I could have gone by my first name, ‘Caleb,’ but I hated that name when I was a boy. It sounded so old. I didn’t like Johnny, either. So I chose my own destiny, name wise.”

“You could have switched at some point.”

“Not really. ‘John’ was it.”

I was curious to see where John was going with this line of talk, so I asked, “Might Caleb Smith turned out differently from John Smith?”

“Perhaps. I might have become the captain of a ship. ‘John Smith’ is too obvious for that.”

“I never knew you were interested in sailing.” I said that, because the college we attended was on the coast and there were lots of opportunities for tsaking to the seas.

“Caleb might have been. John, no.”

A car from down the street passed by. Its driver looked over. John waved and the driver nodded his head.

“One for three,” John said with a grin. “Too dangerous to let loose of the steering wheel to wave back I suppose. We’ll forget he didn’t keep his eyes on the road ahead.”

“Do you regret not getting married?” Once again, I spoke before thinking. I had no business getting that personal.

“Every day of my life. But then, if I’d gotten married I might have regretted it every say of my life as well. I was never even a close relative to Don Juan.”

“Me either, but I got married and had several children. My wife died five years ago. My children have turned out well, so far” Why did I continue saying things I didn’t mean to say?

“I’m sorry to hear about your wife, but glad your children are doing okay. I’m the end of the line for my family, I fear.”

I looked at my watch as unobtrusively as I could. John saw me, however, and swung his legs from the seat of the porch swing and gave the swing a push with them. “I thank you for coming by, Ed. It has meant a lot. I don’t hear anything from people of my early years. As always, I’ve got friends I do things with from time to time, but not real close friends. The fact that you remembered me and have taken this time is truly wonderful.”

“John, It’s been great seeing you. The highlight of my visit here. We need to stay in touch. Let me give you my card.”

“Thanks, John. I don’t have a card, but I’ll put your number in my phone. I don’t do e-mail.”

“Please call me sometime. I mean that. You’re a great guy.”

“I will,” John replied. We shook hands as we stood on the porch in front of the steps. I might have given him a hug, but that seemed too final. I didn’t want to make another blunder.

I got in my car. As I started to pull away, John waved. I stopped the car, put in park, and waved back with a big grin. A few blocks down the street, the adjoining neighborhood was a little rougher looking than John’s neat well-kept one. I couldn’t help but notice a house that had a front porch just like John’s. There was a sign on it that read “Caleb’s Front Porch. A place to sit a spell and talk things over.” Curious, I stopped and asked a passerby about it. The told me that a man named Caleb Smith had created this place where runaways, the homeless, the lonely, anyone could find a friendly face to spend some time with. The house served as a shelter. The sign was shaped like an old three-masted schooner. “Home is the sailor. Home from the sea,.” I thought to myself. The “me he should have been” turned out to be the “me” he truly was.