Saturday, February 07, 2004

We sat around a round table in Applebees, our hangout, ate chocolate cake and were willfully single. Valentine's Day 2000 was not about the boys (and girls) that we were running after or away from, it was about that peculiar sort of love you share with the people that have experienced adolescence with you. It was about chocolate cake and vodka and stories that end with "and we never saw him again." Relationships were not an issue; who wanted, after all, to have to carry a balloon and flowers around school all day?

The best holidays, the best days, are not ones marked by consumer goods and Hallmark. We knew this at seventeen and I know it now, although I sometimes forget. They are the ones where you realize, looking out over the void, that because you are a lucky loser there is someone, some others, standing next to you on the edge, and they are holding your hand.

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