After sitting out yesterday to nurse that kerf in my heel from a new pair of Under Armors, I went for a pre-dawn walk this morning wearing socks in those 2021 sandals of mine.

So beneath a sky full of stars, I set forth...

I had hoped to run through my Starbucks ~5 AM routine, BUT, no, that weekday schedule did not apply!

Thus, I walked on.

I passed all of the oh-so-many, old memories. I watched myself dance in the Piggly Wiggly costume on the corner of Kirby Whitten and Stage. I continued on, smiling as I saw my sister excited tell me that I earned that full ride to UofM as I sheepishly responded in pushing a grocery cart to the store.

Stage Road: I don't know if there's a stretch of road that has meant more to me in my life:

There I am, a middle schooler, working at my family's print shop at two different addresses, bouncing into Subway for the very first time...

...there I am again, at 16, literally jogging for an hour to pull in carts on a busy Saturday at Kroger. "Hey Billy-turned-Bill, do ya REALLY think you ought to jog about with your tied around your forehead like Rambo...in cowboy boots? Whoa, you just leaped over the cart railing—and you do that all the time?"

Shhh, check this out: I am that 9-year-old with an armload of books on his weekly library trip.

Look to the left: that's me over there at Ryan's walking with my family for our Sunday afternoon buffet. You can see me turn from a kid to a man there. "Hey Bill, good job driving with that PDA on that truck's bumper all the way from your house!"

Check it out: across the street, I see me walking into the bowling alley for Cosmic Bowling—he does love blacklights! And that smoke-saturated place makes a good cover story to fib to my parents. "Bill, keep doing the random tangent hopping trick with those two girls in your car. Girls go nuts for mental machinations!"

Yes, that's me in the Union Planter's—me over at the Bank of America line—me over in the parking lot at the Bank of Bartlett—"Hey Mom, that's the wrong, white truck! I'm over in this one!"

Look, it's David and I going into Replays to add to that big ol' collection of CDs I own. "$8.99 is a fantastic price for a used CD! Have fun playing ball over at Bellevue! Don't forget to stop by the Baptist Minor Medical when your chin splatters open there. Oh, and to kill two birds with one stone, after they stitch you up, be sure to go through Christie's checkout at Piggly Wiggly and ask her out to prom. With your luck today, what could go wrong?"

"What a little fella!" There I am in tow with my dad to Chief's Auto Parts and Blockbuster's.

"Oh hey, cute girl, Bill. Remember to order the chicken fingers at Applebee's! And for the love of all things holy, DO NOT LET THAT GIRL'S CHICKEN FINGERS FINGER INTO YOUR MOUTH! You just don't come back from that!"

"Here, lemme help you push this ol' 1979 F-250 out of all of this traffic at the intersection of Bartlett Boulevard and Stage Road to this gas station. Hey, there's Adam Smith. What's Principal Carruthers doing here?"

"Ahh, look at you: got the career job and you're STILL spending time over dinner with your parents at Blue Plate Cafe and Dixie Cafe. That'll be with you a good long time."

And see: there's me from a couple of days ago, peering into the Pig, looking at an empty space of a concrete floor and steel beams...

"Don't take that photo. It's not a keepsake. It'll just remind you of life, all that is lost—that all the high school drama, all the love interests, all the stories and passions are gone."

"The Deli is gone and so are the booths where you were hired in June 1995 on the same day as Jessica by Stan. With minutes of your time at the Pig remaining as the threshold of college is at hand, you'll never again play the midi of Stairway to Heaven in the PA that set up a WAV file announcing that there is a K-Mart Blue Light Special on aisle 5."

"The produce section is gone. There's no Josh's antics of playing baseball with a knife and a watermelon or shared camaraderie with Mark as we stand together with rolled-up white dress shirts and sideburns. You won't be rebel yelling across the front end wearing your prom tux..."

"...there's no more chats in the dairy cooler or 8 PM on the bread aisle with Gilbert...

"...there's no Virtual Fighter arcade to play or 32 oz Powerades around the corner to drink after wrestling, one to drink before purchase and the second for the drive home..."

"...you won't find Jennifer to sack groceries for..."

"...no video department to grab a customer's box of Marlboro Lights..."

"...there's no bakery to grab those 4 fried apple pies for $1 that you liked so much on your break..."

"...no Frozen Food to hate or 0-degree freezer to yank those two girls back to their registers...

"...and there's no checkout line to wait in with an 18-stick pack of Winterfresh gum just to steal a moment."

"No, Bill, don't take that photo. It'll break your heart. Leave that building in your memory, fully thriving and noisy."