Sixteen Years Ago Today

It feels like even longer, but it's been "only" sixteen years...

I was almost 19 then (my birthday is in July), I had just started college at the largest university in Brazil, Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and for the first time in my life I was going to school comparatively far from home and on my own. I took an overcrowded public bus every morning and it took me almost two hours to get there, the trip back was shorter and less crowded.

One early afternoon (my classes were only in the morning) I was at the bus stop waiting for the bus to go home, and while I waited I was people-watching as usual. After taking the bus for one month at the same stop roughly at the same time each day I was already familiar with most people who were there. Someone new showed up that day though, and he was cute. Wearing glasses and clutching a blue duffel bag one one hand and a booklet on the other, he was busy studying while waiting for the bus. Hmmm, I thought, he must go to the same university I go to. I also thought he was very serious and that I loved guys with glasses.

My bus came and I was the first one to get in, so I was rewarded with the only empty seat available. I was surprised to see him getting on the same bus, and I stared at him from my seat in the back as he continued to read his booklet while standing up on the bus. He blushed a few times. Before my stop, when the bus was already half empty and he was seated, I got up and walked towards the front. It was then that I realized that my friend had also boarded the same bus and I started talking to her - this made me less shy and as he got up I asked whether he went to college at USP (which he did, as a physics major) and we introduced ourselves. As it turned out we were getting off at the same stop because he had just started teaching in the same school where my parents worked. We saw each other later that same day and had a great conversation. I knew it then, he was the one I was looking for.

To be continued...