Stoned and thinking about how Ms. Beard and Benson could literally be the same age. You’ll notice Randy only ever uses her last name, but they get to the school and Benson asks about Patricia Beard.
Maybe they went to school together until Benson dropped out their sophomore year to work and take care of Ma. She recognizes him but can’t quite place him when she sees him on the doorstep, but when Randy says his name, it starts coming together.
Ms. Beard -Patti then- was popular but sweet and humble as could be. She and Benson were paired together on a project, and she was pleasantly surprised at how whip-smart he was for being the stereotypical ambivalent slacker-metalhead-stoner. They never hung out outside of school, but they were friendly with one another, Patti being one of the only people Benson spoke to at school and one of even fewer who took him seriously academically. He liked that she made him feel like an equal. She liked that he was an equal.
When he dropped out they kept in touch for a week or two but their friendship never really got off the ground. They were still friendly on the occasions they saw one another around, though.
And then twenty years later he’s in her house. He’s still fascinating, interesting, but quieter than she remembers. She’s mostly intrigued, though, by the fact that he’s with Randy - whatever “with” means. So she asks him -not Randy- how they know one another.
Then she gets a phone call and suddenly the sweet, quiet, smart boy from freshman biology is pointing a gun between her and her former student. Over the next half hour or so everything she knows will abruptly shift, eras of her life clashing together and bursting into life a supernova that would tear through her heart in ways she never could’ve imagined.
(Seriously, though, watch from the first Ms. Beard scene on and frame it in your mind as two people who were never super enmeshed but were polite and now they’re suddenly seeing one another again years later.)
Imagine her crying for him not just as Some Guy, but as someone she’d seen so much potential in but who was failed by society. So much so that she went into education in hopes of stopping other kids from falling through the cracks. Kids like Benson. Kids like Randy. Randy, with all of his potential that everyone around him can see but him. Potential to get promoted or care for a child or just be one of the few to get out of their black hole, dead-end town and make something of himself.