Matt
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Depends how long it's been watching you.
The world seemed to tilt for a second.
What do you mean?
I asked.
Instead of answering directly, he reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out something small and white.
A Polaroid.
He handed it to me.
It was old.
The colors were washed out, the edges yellowed.
It showed two people standing in front of a pickup truck, smiling at the camera.
The truck was older than the Tacomas we'd seen, but it had the same desert dust on it, the same BLM landscape behind it.
One of the guys in the photo was younger, with darker hair and fewer wrinkles, but his eyes were unmistakable.
It was the old man, the other guy.
For a second, I thought it was me.
The resemblance was close enough to make my heart stutter.
Same jawline, same messy hair, same crooked half-smile.
But the clothes were all wrong for the era.
The truck was at least 30 years old.
The photo quality screamed late 80s, maybe early 90s, and the date scribbled in the corner backed that up.
June 91.