My good friend Pat Dewenter and I went to a coffee shop in Centerville today. The young girl behind the counter looked familiar, and as of now I don't remember her name. She asked me, "Do you go to Springboro?" I said yes, told her she looked familiar, and then it hit me: she'd dropped out. No one ever heard from her again. She had been rumored to be messing around and kind of got the bad end of the dirty stick. As we talked I learned she didn't drop out; she had to work full-time to support herself, so she started taking online classes. She worked six hours a day, seven days a week at the coffee shop. We talked for some time, and she kept pushing deeper into conversation. I got pulled away, said, "See you later," and Pat and I drank our coffees.

Driving home in the Jeep, through the blizzard of rain, I suddenly realized how desperate she had been, and it all washed over me. It was so obvious! She was lonely and stressed; working full time, having been cut-off from her few friends at the high school (most of whom apparently turned against her), she was left alone and wigged-out, wanting just someone to like her, someone to talk with her, someone to be a friend. I wondered, "How did I miss this until it was too late?" My heart flooded - and now floods - with compassion. I just wish I could re:wind time and go back, stay at the counter, talk with her - no one else was ordering. The timing was perfect, almost pre-arranged.

It is times like these that I wish we were created with built-in systems to read other peoples' emotions. It would make things so much simpler.