Our high school boasted a modest but thriving foreign exchange program. Year after year, a small group of students from various mostly European countries would take up residence in our tiny district, eager to learn what it meant to be in America. I’m not sure living in Podunk, Maine, gave them such a great perspective — I always felt sort of bad for them, like maybe they’d drawn last in the exchange student lottery or something. But for us, it was a breath of fresh air to have them in our midst.

Excited as I was to have these visitors around, I think I always thought of them as vaguely untouchable and on some higher plane — they were European, after all, and schooled in the ways of the world. With the exception of one hilarious Greek boy who became fast friends with our small circle, I was never particularly close to any of them. But I do have little snapshots tucked away, it turns out. Hearing “Don’t Turn Around” this morning transported me to our high-school gym. Just outside the locker room, talking with the blonde German girl about how much she loved … Roxette?

Yes, there is a flaw in this memory. In the car, I was able to correctly lump “Don’t Turn Around,” “I Saw the Sign,” and “All That She Wants Is Another Baby” together as by the same group. But I had the wrong group.

It’s possible that the German girl actually loved Ace of Base, and that’s what we were discussing that day. Or perhaps it was Roxette after all. Turns out they’re both Swedish, so they must live in the same file drawer in my brain. (Move over, ABBA.)

I’ll never know which it was, and I doubt the German girl would remember, could I even begin to track her down. This blog is beginning to reveal great gaps in my mental cache. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Perhaps, as Ace of Base commands and as TGOTS said in her lovely post today, the way to gaze is forward instead.

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