In My Place

Out of all things that she could have remembered from that book, what she did was a paragraph that didn't matter. A young truck driver drops everything to accompany a strange 60-year-old man who talks to cats. Another falls in love with a girl in a picture. World War II soldiers lost in a forest have remained the same ever since. But what she remembers are half forgotten lines about a girl the truck driver could have visited. The truck driver wonders why he is going along with a strange 60-year-old on a strange excursion. He could have visited that girl in Tokyo "who always made time for him whenever he wanted to meet her," he thinks. Which is when it hits her.

She is that girl, she realises. There is no mention of that girl in the book again. Just that one line. It's easy to identify with that protagonist in a book who conquers all kinds of odds to get to his goal. Easier still to identify with the best friend or the sidekick, and like Kate Winslet in Holiday, feel like a side character in your own life. But nothing... nothing quite puts you in your place like the realisation that you aren't the best friend. You aren't even the best friend's other option. Yours is not the situation that could have happened. You were never an option.

You are those twenty words that people won't even remember.