I never knew her. Not in any genuine way to speak of. Arcata High was small enough that it was impossible not to know who she was. It was also large enough that she was always on the outer edge of my social circle, perched somewhat tenuously between my mom's friends' daughters on the varsity volleyball team and the guys I regularly had to wait behind at the Safeway deli counter during lunch.
I never knew her. Not in any genuine way to speak of. I can remember seeing her standing beside Matt and Diego during madrigal choir performances. If I'm not mistaken, I also had Algebra 1 with her during our freshman year. (Which would mean that she too could speak to the sad and confusing experience that being taught by Mr. Nielson so often was. But I digress.) Neither circumstance provided me with any specific knowledge about her.
Such knowledge would not have been easy to receive in any case. Strike one was the fact that I was a teenage boy. As such, my neurosis was often matched only by my nerdiness. Strike two was the fact that our senior class had no shortage of characters. Owen, my friend since I was six, who found his raison d'etre in challenging the decision-making of school administrators. Paul, whose brilliant academic ability was rivaled only by the beastly quality of his car. Phaedra, our Homecoming Queen, who was adamant that the best way to be true to your school was to be yourself. (She was right.)
It was easy to know these three. Merely staying on campus during lunch was an open invitation to hear Mrs. Baer raise her voice at Owen. But getting to know Leah was more difficult. It was, in the way that adolescent interaction so often proves to be, rather complicated. Her intelligence, while plainly evident, never called attention to itself. She was one of the most beautiful members of the senior class, but she showed her beauty more through quiet smiles than through rouge-encumbered cheeks. Even at Arcata High, Leah Stamper never truly stood out. Which was precisely what made her worth knowing.
I never knew her. Not in any genuine way to speak of. But I always wanted to.
I graduated from Arcata High in June of 2001. Since that time, I've moved to Washington state to pursue my education, tried, over the course of two years, to comprehend the nuances of the East Coast summer camp environment, and accepted a job in the heart of San Francisco in a field that couldn't be more different than my career ambitions. I've had my heart broken, albeit in slightly different ways, by both a baseball team and a baseball fan, gotten lost in the Mojave Desert at midnight, and listened to more Van Halen songs more often than a man in the new millennium probably should.
Through it all, certain questions continually arise: Where I am going in my life? How do I want to get there? Why did Eddie ever think Gary would make a good lead singer? Why does being 26 feel so strikingly similar to being 19? Will this be the year that the A's give me a World Series title? Whatever happened to Leah Stamper?
I'll let you know what I find out.
