Summer 1999
I was back home for the summertime! The first year away at school had gone fine, but I’d missed the clean mountain air and surrounding forest… and the lack of hustle and bustle.
Denver was a huge city with all the traffic, pollution, crime, and everything else that came with a populated area of that size. People were rude and always seemed to be in a rush. I had rarely ventured off campus the past year, usually just to make grocery runs to stock the dorm room. Other than that, I had no real need or desire to go anywhere. Internet shopping had become a thing by then, and with a few clicks on my laptop, books, movies, music, and the like showed up as if by magic in a few days.
Not only was Barry nice enough to give me my old job back for the summer, but he promoted me to cashier as well, which came with a nice two-dollar-an-hour raise. I quickly got the hang of cashiering, almost intuitively so, and wondered if I had done this before in a past timeline. When I wasn’t working there to make money for next year’s tuition and expenses, I was catching up on movies from Blockbuster and books from the library.
The financial situation was looking pretty good for this year again, and with Mom again going fifty-fifty with me, I scraped together enough for tuition, room and board, and books without needing a student loan.
I still hung out with Laura and Mike during the summer, albeit less frequently since things had changed. I don’t know if the reason was the relationship dynamic or the fact we were just growing up, but the situation just felt different. When we got together, it was to do something rather than hanging out just to hang out and while away the time. Childhood was behind us, and I was kind of sad to see our old carefree lifestyle left by the wayside.