impressions

There are impressions, and there are impressions.
I wonder which ones matter, after all.
A boy, who speaks with a funny accent, and wears street-dude clothes,
Has read more books than anyone I know,
Or perhaps than most of them put together.
Another, with a earring in one ear, from a goon school,
Is awfully cool- going to be a philo professor,
And wilfully flunked a year of computer science to do it.
I've never wanted anything that much.
A highly religious one, who listens to no "secular" music
Can play any instrument I can name
But reads no music.
It's all in his head.
The girls surprise me less.
Maybe girls surprise me less.
Annoy me more.
Competition?
One annoying one references Balzac and Virginia Woolf
Before I've registered the question,
But has no sense,
Or spice, or Something.

But the thing, the thing, the thing is
I don't know whether when I see them-
First thing in the morning
Or twenty years later at reunion-
I wonder which impression will matter, will have mattered.

But that is, of course, my problem, not theirs.