Foreshadowing

fore-shad-ow: verb: When an author of a plot uses an advance sign or warning of what is to come in the future.

A few years back, there was a song that was super popular. It was played over and over and over again on the radio. At first, I really liked it a lot. After hearing it about 50 million times a day on every radio station, in every public place, and posted on people’s social media sites via youtube videos, my opinions about that song changed drastically. It was a song by the artist Goyte called “Somebody That I Used To Know”. You probably remember it. It was super catchy and once you heard it, it had you singing “somebody” in a high pitch voice for the rest of the day.

The summer that it became an overplayed hit, I was working in a restaurant at the beach. My x-fiance was also working there, but this was before we had even started our story. There had only been those moments when the attraction was super obvious, like when you catch each other looking at each other from across the restaurant and your stomach does that little flip thing and you can’t stop smiling because you can feel that amazing butterfly feeling you get in the beginning. We had only had a few conversations, mostly about work stuff and any excuse we could use to talk to each other. We had hung posters up for the grand opening on the street with fishing line out of the bed of his Toyota pick up truck together; I don’t remember the small talk in-between us but I remember the feeling of just being completely attracted to him. I have small tattoos on my hands below my thumbs, about the size of dimes, on the left is a world and on the right is a peace sign. [Please do not judge me for the fact I did get ‘world peace’ tattooed on me, I was young and in my hippy movement stage of life]. Nick came up to me as I was leaning across a high top table one shift and touched the tattoo on my left hand and asked me if it was a tattoo of a deadhead. [If you don’t know what a deadhead is..open a new tab, google it, and download some of their music onto your itunes OK?] I remember the feeling of butterflies from his first physical contact with me mixed with embarrassment as I explained that the hard-to-recognize, blown-out tattoo was of a world and not a deadhead, followed by the explanation of the whole “world peace” thing and being young and dumb when I got it. We both had a pretty good laugh about it. Another time, the restaurant had run out of aprons and Nick had never gotten one. I remember telling him I’d bring him one the next time we worked together. This immediately lead to us comparing our schedules and seeing what shifts we were scheduled together for the rest of the week. I think both of us had probably already checked each other’s schedule on the one hanging on the wall of the server station to see what days we both needed to make sure we were a little bit early and, at least for me because I’m a chick, what days I needed to spend a little extra time on my hair. These had pretty much been all the first interactions that we had had, back when it was new and exciting and developing.

On a different shift, a group of co-workers and I were standing around- probably waiting for tables to come in. The restaurant, although it was new, was never really busy, and we didn’t know it then, but would be closing down in about 2 or 3 more months. I don’t really remember everyone else who was present in the group, but I remember that Nick was there. The song by Goyte came on over our sound system and we all started singing the lyrics that were impossible not to know at this point. Nick looked at me and said he had never heard this song before. I was shocked. I don’t remember exactly the conversation that followed between us, but I remember some back and forth about how that could be possible. At the end of it all, I remember he said something along the lines of how he obviously knew it because it was overplayed everywhere. We laughed. I knew I loved him, right then and there.

The song became a joke throughout our growing relationship. It was on mixed CDs and sang between the two of us. It was never skipped on the radio; it had reached it’s peak so it went from being played all the time, to never, then a couple months later they threw it back into the rotation here and there.

I guess I never realized that the song would become a foreshadowing of our story. That God- or the universe or whatever your beliefs are- used it to bring us together and, as the author of my story, would use it as a hint to our future. It was the catalyst of the moment I first realized I loved him. But it was also a clear, lyrical prediction of our ending. We used to listen to it together, it was an on-going joke, built right into the foundation of us. And now?.. He has become somebody that I used to know.

“But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know..”

Dammit I hate that fucking song.