A remembrance of a high school friendship that never happened.

For the most part, I enjoyed the town where I grew up and the local public schools I attended. I lived in a majority white town in Massachusetts from the age of 7 through high school during the late 1970s through the 1980s. Out of a graduating class of 260-odd students, my brother and I were the only African American students in our class (only two other students of color were there, Asian and Indian). This was not a problem, per se, but in some significant ways it shaped and even limited my individual relationships with my peers, particularly in high school.

I always remember, I think I was about 14, when the new kids came to school. A boy, my age and in my class, and his younger sister had moved to town. They were black. Just about everyone (except a few close friends) said to me, "Hey, you can go out with him." Before we had even been introduced, everyone assumed that the new kid and I would be a couple. I resented this assumption, and I believe he did, too. I remember one moment when we faced each other in the hallway, an opportunity to strike up a conversation perhaps, but instead we glared at one another, turned and went our separate ways. We barely ever spoke a word to one another the entire year, and then the family moved away.

Later on, I thought back and realized what a shame that in this small way racial dynamics had limited our chances to be friends (or even "boyfriend and girlfriend" in that high school way). Who knows, maybe he was really funny, or smart and charming, maybe he would have shown me something new about friendship and trust at the tender age of those teen years. I will never know, because I let other people's ideas about who I was supposed to be with shape my choices. It was also a learning experience because from then on, I never let the expectations of my peers shape my notions of who I should and should not be with.