Years ago, I was awash in gangsta rap and trying to impress people who didn’t like themselves, much less me. I was afforded a ton of opportunities, and I got to do a lot of things that I wonder now just what had to slide into place to get me those chances to do those things.

One summer, I got to do a summer program, and I made a number of lifelong friends there. One changed my life in a small, but significant way.

I was well versed in indie comics, scouring a couple of indie comic book stores for titles that appealed to me. What I was unaware of at the time was the existence of zines, self-published tracts made by people with something, anything, to share.

I was in this summer program, and a young lady there shared hers with me, and I was taken aback. I don’t have it anymore, or at least I can’t find it, but I had worn it dog-eared from how many times I had read it. And it was just so new to me; she had writing and some drawings and was going through the usual teenage shit I was going through and lived in a completely different city and I was smitten. Smitten in the way that I felt this connection, I wanted to do the same thing and maybe someone else would find their same connection with my stuff that I did with hers. Also smitten in that she was short and had glasses, and I’ve always been a sucker for short women with glasses.

So one day I’m bored and look up her name, and we have some mutual friends, oddly, and I’m wondering if I should reach out and tell her thank you, now that I’ve (finally) made a zine of my own. Would that be creepy? Would that be unwelcome? Should I let that sleeping dog lie?