not ironic.

"I'm not this," Taylor Albrecht said to herself.

She was walking home from some guy's house. It was 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. The night before she went to a party at a friend's house. She went home with another friend of hers. They messed around. She regretted it instantly. He couldn't have cared less...not necessarily about her, but about the other things.

"People fool around in their twenties," he would later say over the phone when he called to be vaguely chivalrous. "Yeah, people like Penny Marshall in the '70s," she'd answer.

She was supposed to feel good about the fact that he called her. She didn't feel good.

"I'm not this," Taylor said again to herself.

For as long as she could remember she had been in serious relationships with people she could picture a future with. And now, on the corner of Mesirow and Ronalds Street in front of Thai Thai Thai restaurant she found herself searching for a cab to take her home and away from this life she somehow walked into —four-inch heels and all.

A white Jeep drove by. She thought of the OJ trial. It had happened when she was in fourth grade. Talking out loud, wrapping her arms around her torso, "What was that, 1995, '96?" She was in Miss Devlin's class then. The week was a blur to her now, but she remembered watching that car chase and thinking how slowly everything was happening. That same year the Olympic Torch toured the US via train. It had stopped in her town. Everyone's parents took them out of school to watch as it pulled up to the train station, except her parents. Her parents had forgotten it was happening, so Taylor spent the day with Miss Devlin and Ke Xao, the new student from China.

As more cars drove by Taylor's memory was jogged until finally a yellow cab headed toward her. She unwrapped her arms to wave it down, but the cabbie missed her and went for a woman wearing appropriate clothes for a brisk fall day. Taylor didn't look like a harlot or anything, but she was missing the crucial element known as a jacket and should have been wearing flats at this hour. The woman, on the other hand, was obviously out for groceries or to run some sort of errand, maybe stop at TJ Maxx for some pre-Black Friday Christmas shopping. Taylor looked back at the scene and laughed, then said, "This is not ironic."

She was the person she thought she'd never become. Sure, she was experiencing this momentous 'walking home in the wrong outfit at the wrong hour in the wrong shoes' occasion six years after she was supposed to experience it as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, but nevertheless there she was. The notion of better late than never passed through her mind. She judged it harshly. "God," she said out loud to no one but herself. "Some things shouldn't be late, they should just never arrive."

Her four-inch heels clicked on the sidewalk as she turned away from the cab. She started to take a step in the direction of her apartment, a mile from there.

"Hey!" It was the grocery-store-errand-lady. "Hey!"

Taylor turned, correctly assuming that the only other person on the street was in fact speaking to her.

"Who me?" Yes, of course you, she thought.

"Yeah, you need this." The woman had dark brown eyes and blonde eyelashes. She wore a pink hat and a green puffer coat. She looked like a teacher. Everyone looks like teachers when they're running errands — something about the frantic state one gets in when checking things off lists.

"Are you sure?" Taylor asked, clicking toward the woman.

"Please," the woman said. "You need this."

The woman smiled, understanding that Taylor wasn't a woman of the night and perhaps just found herself in a situation she hadn't foreseen the night before. This woman got it. She probably was Taylor at one point.

"Really?" Taylor stood in the street between the cab door and the seat.

"For sure," said the woman.

As Taylor sat down and closed the door, the woman waved to her. Taylor waved back and mouthed "Thank you."

She got that phone call from that guy. It played out as she thought it would. She told her roommates about her night. They all laughed about it like girls who didn't know what else to do. When telling the story later she'd say things like, "We're nothing but our experiences, right?" Then Taylor would remember that woman out running errands early on a Saturday morning and hope she might be her eventually.