Friday Flashback: Self Portrait With Palm Tree

This is me, seven years ago:

I am lost in Tempe, Arizona.

At least it may have been Tempe. I got on the bus in Tempe, after all. Waved good-bye to my friends at the edge of the sprawling ASU campus. Started reading. Listened for my stop. Got off when the driver called out the street name.

Funny thing about big cities: sometimes the streets go all over town.

It was my first time on a city bus. I was 19. I had just gotten engaged. I was in some sort of industrial area with blocky, faceless buildings.

I should have called someone. Obviously. But I found a copy shop and asked for a phone book and looked on the map. Three miles between me and where I was supposed to be. Three miles in flat Arizona, mild in March.

I decided to walk.

I stopped to take my own picture under a palm tree. Someone once told me that unkempt palm trees become havens for rats, that you can prod the dead leaves with a stick and rats just come pouring out. I saw a palm tree for the first time when I was 17. I love palm trees.

I meant for it to be a good picture, a self-portrait in the pre-Facebook days when self-portraits weren't so common. But the wind picked up, and I blinked, and the shutter snapped after my smile ended.

I remember thinking when I took the picture that it proved I was brave, setting out into the unknown city by myself.

I remember thinking it proved I was reckless, at least I could be reckless.

I remember feeling like I was on the edge of something.

That feeling hasn't gone away since.

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Check out other Friday Flashbacks here and here.