I had a bizarre flashback yesterday while sitting in the carpool line at school. I think it must have been the 90's grunge I was listening to on DC101 that jogged this particular memory. I'd originally intended for my "Memory Lane" posts to focus on childhood memories, but hey, college memories are just as important for my kids to know about, right?
During my senior year in college I became somewhat enamored of a guy in my Russian language class. I still regret taking all those Russian classes in college because I think it really screwed up my Ukrainian for a while. It will always be one of my college regrets that I didn't just stick to Spanish which would have really been useful in my current job as a home health physical therapist. I mean really, how often do I encounter a patient who only speaks Russian? I'll tell you how often . . . NEVER.
But I digress. As I sat in my Russian language class, trying to keep my classmates from figuring out that I already spoke a Slavic language and therefore was breezing through the class while they all stumbled along, I became aware of a nice-looking guy who sat behind me. He was my exactly my type: tall, good-looking in a boyish way, dark hair, nice smile, outgoing personality. (I ended up marrying my type, now that I think of it) For some reason the one thing that stood out to me was that he always wore a red baseball cap. ALWAYS. He didn't just wear baseball caps, he wore the SAME red baseball cap every time I saw him.
I started to refer to him as Red Hat to my roommates. Being in our early twenties we spent a lot of time checking out different guys, talking about them, planning our evenings around ways to accidentally run into them at various happy hours and parties. I found myself looking for red hats on campus, always checking to see if it was "my" Red Hat or not. I never actually knew his name because everyone in class went by a Russian name. Even though I'd become much more extroverted in college, I never mustered up the courage to talk to this guy in class so I didn't get the chance to ask him his name. For some reason we never crossed paths outside of class either, so I found myself looking forward to Russian class just to see Red Hat and hopefully get the chance to talk to him.
The chance never came. I never took that extra step of saying hello, starting a conversation, nothing like that. The more I thought about him the more intimidated I became and so Red Hat became this untouchable, unreachable private obsession that never came to fruition. My friends would occasionally ask whatever became of Red Hat and I would just shrug. Eventually Russian class ended and so did my Red Hat fixation.
Several years later my friends and I were out at a bar in downtown DC when I looked up and . . . there he was! Red Hat was standing right in front of me and his friends happened to know my friends and lo and behold, I found myself talking to Red Hat. I casually mentioned that we'd been in the same Russian class. He nodded politely but it was obvious that he didn't remember me. I finally learned his name although I can't remember it now. We hit it off, spent the next hour or so hanging out and by the end of the evening he'd invited me over to his house to watch the Redskins game the next day with him and his friends.
The following day my friends and I woke up with hangovers, having stayed out too late the night before and having had too many cheap beers. However, I was excited about the prospect of hanging out with Red Hat so I managed to shake off the icky feelings and allowed the anticipation to build. I convinced one of my friends to accompany me to Red Hat's house so I wouldn't be walking into a houseful of strangers by myself.
When we got to our destination, a guy opened the door and looked at us with a perplexed look on his face. We explained that we'd been invited by Red Hat to stop by. He shrugged, let us in and pointed us toward a keg of beer and a stack of red solo cups. We helped ourselves and followed the sound of voices down a long set of stairs into the basement. We stepped into a dark room where about six unfamiliar looking guys all looked up at us. No one said a word. I nervously cleared my throat and stated (AGAIN) that we'd been invited by Red Hat to come watch the game.
"Oh," said one of his roommates. "Yeah, he actually went to the game. Someone offered him tickets this morning, so he's not here."
Ugh. Now my friend and I were stuck in a dark basement, holding our red solo cups of cheap beer and not knowing a soul. We quickly finished our drinks, made some excuse about having to be somewhere else at a certain time and quickly made our exit. Talk about deflating.
To make matters worse, I was so distracted by disappointment that on our way back to my friend's house I accidentally ran a red light and was immediately pulled over and given a ticket. Dark clouds formed in the skies above and it started to rain. My only consolation was that now Red Hat was probably sitting in the rain at Fedex Stadium which SERVED HIM RIGHT for standing me up.
I never saw Red Hat again. I'm not sure I would even recognize him at this point. I hadn't even thought about Red Hat until I was sitting in my car yesterday and a song on the radio took me back to my college days. Funny how a song can stir up a memory.
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