There's a kid I met circa this time frame, and I honestly can't say whether I went to fifth or sixth grade with him. But I'm more inclined to say that it was the sixth grade, though I might honestly be wrong. And that's as good a spot to begin this part of the story. So, my sixth grade was actually spent in two different school. I've established that the school I started going to for fifth grade was both less than ideal as well as very poorly situated. Somewhere midyear, and for reasons I no longer can recall, my parents made the decision to move me to the school where I went for my third grade. Let's focus on the first half of that school year. As far as I can recall, I didn't have many, or indeed any at all, classmates from my previous year, so that meant a whole new set of people for me to get to know, but mostly steer away from and ignore. And out of that slew of new characters, I mainy remember just the three : there was a girl with a cleft palate and I couldn't understand a single word she said, while pretty much everyone else could. I'm guessing that in this grade there might have a been a bunch of students who might've known each other from other grades, I don't know. But certainly a few, for sure. And one of those was a beautiful blonde girl who looked uncannily like that beautiful blonde girl from fourth grade, and I'm pretty sure they both had the same name - Joana. And though at first I might've they were one and the same girl, though it made no sense to me as to why she would be going to that pigsty of a school. And I soon enquired, maybe not directly, and found out that no, they were just two different beautiful blonde girls who looked a lot a like and maybe had the same name. But it did make those five or six months or so I spent there far more appealing to the eye, at least.
But the kid I mentione at the beginning, he was the one kid that year who I got along with really well. I knew very early on that he came from a very poor family - he wore the same clothes pretty much every day, and you could tell he didn't wash very often, but I didn't care for any of that, I just wanted to be friends with him. We got along so well that I eventually asked my parents if he could maybe spend a weekend with us - I wanted this kid, his name was Paulo, to at least have some good square meals, and sleep in a warm bed and take as many - or as little - showers he wanted. I felt really sorry that our budding friendship never got to grow, because after moving I lost all contact with him, as his family didn't have a landline phone.
Funny thing, many years later, and as I was entering my adult age, I was working in a convenience store, and every now and again I'd see a customer there who reminded me of him a lot - this kid had a very peculiar face - and though on occasion our gazes briefly met and maybe there was a mutual sense of recognition, but neither of us dared take that step. What if he wasn't the same kid I went to school with?
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