Sometimes you wanna go
where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
You wanna be where you can see
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows your name

On my first day in Joensuu, I rode my bike to town with Mom. We had moved there from Helsinki the day before, I was barely a teenager, and I had not looked forward to leaving the Finnish capital for a small town like that.

I knew it was a small town because we used to spend a day there every year when we visited grandma who lived nearby.

During that bike ride, I grew even more desperate. Not only had we moved to a small town in the middle of nowhere; we lived on the outskirts of the town.

It seemed to take forever to get to downtown. As we came to the edge of our little neighbourhood, there was just open space for as far as the eye could see. When we finally — that seemed like ages later — pedalled up a hill, Mom told me it was the last one.

From the top, we could almost see the town, she said.

And you could. There was the river, and up the bend, you could see buildings, and on the horizon, I later learned, the town hall.

Of course, after the summer, I went to school, and made new friends, and then a couple of years later, to high school where I made even more new friends.

Those days, one of my favourite summer pastimes was to hop on my bike and just ride around town. I was almost guaranteed to bump into a friend.

Maybe I swung by the local tennis courts, and a buddy was there. Or maybe the other tennis courts in town. Maybe at the town square.

Somewhere, for sure.

I’d stop and we’d chat, and then I’d get back on the bike and keep going.

I only lived there for those five years, but they were those legendary formative years and some of my best friends are from that time. Of course, after all the years, and decades, I can now ride around town for a full day, and never bump into a friend.

I’ve chased that feeling since then.

The other day, I was back in Joensuu — where my dad still lives — for my high school reunion.

Already the night before, the group chat was abuzz with last-minute plans both for that night and the actual reunion the next day.

Suddenly, the town came alive.

The next morning, the town square turned into the meeting point it always has been, but now with more of my old friends than — maybe ever. Some faces were more familiar than others, some were easier to attach to a name than others.

Who knows why some moments become memories. I have no idea what was so special about the time when Mika explained to me that John Mellencamp’s Scarecrow album was produced by “Little Bastard”, and that it was Mellencamp’s pseudonym, and why our mutual friend insists that Mika had a Springsteen poster on his wall when Mika himself denies it just as forcefully. I don’t remember a poster, either.

What made Tiina’s and Sinikka’s Springsteen presentation so memorable that I can still see them stand in front of the class, playing the River album? Was it my surprise at their being fans, or the fact that we had that class in a room we had never used before?

It gets even more mysterious when it comes to other people’s memories of me. Two people told me they remember seeing me do math homework sitting on the floor outside the classroom just before class, but if you asked me, I’d say I had never missed homework. (Another former classmate who I hadn’t seen since we graduated decades ago asked me if I had become a pro hockey player.)

The following day was a wonderful summer’s day, one of those days you would’ve seen me on a bike back in the 1980s.

I decided to walk back to town.

I took the same route I took with Mom that first day in Joensuu, except that now there are houses and underpasses and traffic lights between our neighbourhood and the town that weren’t there then.

Just before I got to the top of the last hill from where you can almost see town, I stopped at traffic lights when I suddenly heard someone call out my name.

I looked up and on the other side of the road, on the river side, I saw my cousin ride his bike toward town, his one arm in the air in a greeting.

It was as close as I’ve ever come to being a time traveler.