Mike Mills

 

I knew him in high school. We weren’t particularly close – more like our social networks intersected in a couple of salient areas, but that was about it. He was nice – a bowler hat, that 90s thrift look, and a very reclusive demeanor. I probably don’t think of him very often, not consciously, but unconsciously, I always remember him when I change lanes while going through an intersection.

 

Memory is arbitrary. I can’t help that the smell of flowers puts me at a street corner in Bethesda, or that the very idea of coffee and cigarettes translates into a chilly morning in a dorm in Ohio. I was giving Mike a ride somewhere in Rockville – back on Parklawn or something, near a Sear’s store, I think. As I changed lanes while going through an intersection, Mike said to me, “Did you know that’s illegal?”

 

“What is?”

 

“Changing lanes while going through an intersection. I got pulled over doing it. It was a 25 dollar ticket.”

 

“Really? I had no idea.”

 

“I guess you’re just luckier.”

 

There was something about the way he said it, and this isn’t just some cheesy bit of misremembering or romanticizing the past. The “something” about the way he said it didn’t tell me that I’d be writing this today, after his death. The “something” was a quality of being put-upon, down-and-out, perpetually unlucky, and also a profound indifference to the condition of being put-upon, down-and-out, perpetually unlucky. Maybe there was anger there, too. Probably there was. The reason political correctness seems like such a 1990s phenomenon is partly because the 1990s were closer to the 1980s than to the 2000s. It’s entirely more likely that Mike Mills may have been targeted by the police, by chauvinists or the intolerant, because he dressed a little bit weird for the suburbs. So did we all, but Mike still kind of stood out.

 

Sometimes shy people are just boring, as Jens Lekman says, but I never found Mike to be particularly shy and he was definitely not boring. He was a good person, gentle and kind. I hope he went on to be less put-upon. He didn’t have a whole lot of time, but considering he was probably 16 or 17 when I knew him…well, he only had another 16 or 17 years for the world to make it up to him. I hope it did, or that it at least came close to making it up to him.