He friended me just after Thanksgiving, Week 13 of regular-season football this year. He wanted to know if I was the same Lisa who studied marine science at a certain East Coast college for a summer semester back in the early ’80s. I was. I am.

The inquiry catapulted me back to when I was 19, unattached, uncommitted and looking for adventure and high excitement. The college town was the perfect place: the program was good and the ocean was practically outside my door. Those were my only two requirements. Because I had never been to that campus before, it also offered the added and unexpected luxury of absolute anonymity. That summer I worked nights tending bar and went to school during the day. Class was held onboard an outrigger trawler. All I wore were sneakers and a bathing suit.

I logged in and clicked on his name. He looked almost the same. Well, maybe not. My memory from that summer is vague. His personal profile revealed where he lived, that he had three kids and that he was married.

We began to chat. Like me, he left the dream of a career in marine science behind and settled for a standard paying job. Like me, he had a parent suffering from dementia. He remembered I had a hand-painted car; I remembered his vast collection of records by the Who. I told him I hit a deer while driving on a dark road the previous weekend; that same night he sat in his car in the parking lot of the Nassau Coliseum until midnight while his teenage daughter attended a hip-hop concert inside. He offered his cellphone number and urged me to call and keep him company during his long commute to work, but I would never do that. I’m married, after all.