Pinky Swear

For the record, I didn’t show up at the Taichung Train Station. I’m sure the two of you didn’t,
either. I’m sure when the three of us pinky-swore we’d meet in front of the Taichung Train
Station in twenty years, it was just us being silly together, like when we swore we’d marry a boy
band and be wives together. We never said twenty years from which date or at what time. For the
record, I’ve always thought it’d be in the morning, around eight or nine. I’ve always pictured one
of us standing there wearing an old lady’s dress and holding an old lady’s purse and waiting like
an old lady with time to spare. I’ve always wondered if whoever showed up first would be
standing in front of the train station and waiting all day or what. And then when it was roughly
twenty years later, I didn’t feel old enough to be standing in front of the train station wearing an
old lady’s dress and holding an old lady’s purse and waiting like an old lady. I know I sound like
an asshole but at the time I didn’t think it was practical to get on a transpacific flight just to show
up at the Taichung Train Station over a twenty-year-old pinky swear. For the record, I thought
about it and the thought of that makes me think about how I thought about going back to
Taichung to the train station wearing an old lady’s dress and holding an old lady’s purse and
waiting.

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