The circular red taillights.

I received my quarterly alumni magazine from my high school, Lawrenceville Preparatory School in New Jersey.  I casually opened it and started in on Class Notes.

I discovered that my Second Form roommate had died, "prematurely from a brain tumor."  I remember Art as an 18 year-old athletic giant, young, fast, a top high jumper for the track team, running down the field on an 80-yard touchdown jaunt as I watched from the sidelines and urged him on at the top of my lungs.  That's the last year I saw him, so in my memory he never aged.

I also read that my science teacher had died.  Mr. Loux wasn't that much older than us, in his twenties I'd say when he taught us chemistry.

I remember he was a dry personality, brilliant but understated, who revealed a hidden wild streak in the form of his Camaro convertible.  One night I watched out the window as he drove around the campus Circle and out the Alumni Gate at an elevated but not reckless speed, off on some late night bachelor's  adventure while us students finished study hall in our rooms.  In my mind's eye I can still see the red lights of the Camaro's circular tail lamps winking out as the young teacher made the turn onto the main highway and sped off, symbolizing what was then but what is not now.