Ghost

You know those teenage moments? Not the ones where you were wearing just the right thing and you thought of the perfect phrase at the absolute best moment to say it - no, you remember both those times quite clearly. I'm thinking of the moments when you know, right as you're saying or doing it, how utterly humiliating it is. The times you can almost see the words leaving your mouth on a ribbon and you want to yank them back in but it's already too late. The ones you live over in your head that night, and the next, and at odd moments when you're tired or uncertain or when something happens to just remind you that yes, you made a total fool of yourself. Say, for example, on a date, when things just seem to get worse and worse and in trying to recover from one idiot statement you blunder into another until by the end you're completely convinced that said date is driving away at top speed and will never, ever want to call you again. And then he doesn't.

For the younger types (Children for example), I can actually assure you that you don't really, truly spend the rest of your life writhing in agony. Eventually you grow up (a bit) and get a bit of perspective and, frankly, let the memory fade. After all, there are so very many of those moments.

But there's just enough of it left that should you happen to bump into that person, many many years later, and should you get talking, and should he just happen to mention that blasted date, it's rather nice to find out that maybe things weren't quite as world-shatteringly horrible as you remember. Maybe you were just young, and a bit of an idiot.

And maybe he was too.