Weekends, we would hop into the car and head out into the middle of nowhere for the express purpose of looking at the stars that our marginally citified lives denied us. Even on the beach they seemed farther away than they ever did when we lay on top of the car and held hands to make sure we stayed tethered to the earth.
The last few weeks have been a tougher than usual battle between myself and myself, and I have been holding on by my fingernails until I am capable of fixing the things that I have broken just to hear them smash. I am still a little bit fabulous, somewhere.
While on the bus on the way to the bartender's for dinner the other night, I chatted on the phone with Nick. I rarely spend time on the telephone, because I hate phones and wish we could communicate entirely via letters, smoke signals, and soft touches. Catching up with the other coast, however, requires sacrifices, and as we spoke he mentioned that he is currently substitute teaching. This is a revelation that secretly delights me, although I won't tell him that because I am mindful of the day when in our senior year psychology class I accused him of being a closet romantic due to his reluctance to sleep with his dumb blonde girlfriend. That's not something seventeen-year-old boys want to hear, and though he admitted to the fact finally last year, I'm pretty sure that fellows in their 20's have an equal dislike of the notion that their rapport with small children is absolutely adorable. Instead, I accused him of going all everything-I-need-to-know-I-learned-in-kindergarten on me.
He paused. "Well, that's kind of true, though."
I moved the phone away from my mouth, trying desperately not to laugh, as he pointed out that if we were still in kindergarten we'd just call each other names, he'd sing the alphabet--burping it, if I desired--and then we'd have some cookies and juice and a nap. And now I understand just why he's so popular with the little kids: he's still kind of one of them.
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