Walking out of the first hockey game I had attended in seven years, my friend and I noted that it was colder outside than before we had gone into the arena. A simple observation granted portent by its accuracy. My friend then said that his heart hurt from having to work so hard to maintain the steady temperature of his body.
As though provided by fortuity herself in all her vouchsafed garrulousness, one of the two young women in front of us returned that it wasn't your heart that provided this service, but your blood. I caviled that your heart pumps the blood that would otherwise et cetera, et cetera, thinking to myself how strange to be arguing with a stranger after a hockey game about something I had no scientific expertise to discuss. And how strange to be winning that argument so handily.
She must have clued into my lack of experience and asked my major, asserting moments later that as a one studying chemistry with a pre-med focus, she was more qualified in her ability to make the assertions I was seemingly full to the brim with.
I haven't had a major in three years.
It was dark, the hood on my jacket was pulled up,. The lines on my face were then as ripples on the waters illuminated by a cloud-covered quarter moon. The sorrows stamped across my brow from mounting worries delivered from the inexorability of time's tenebrous unveiling were lost to the recalcitrance of my protestations and the fact she was walking in front of me.
But here I was. An undergraduate again. And I had been asked the ultimate question. No query of religion, party affiliation, sports fandom slips as easily off the tongue as any 20-year-old asking any other how they have decided to sum up their life so far and aspirations thereafter. And then we would talk about what dorms we lived in. What dining halls we ate at. What classes we've taken. And not really be interested in any of the answers, and isn't it better, I thought, to start talking to someone this way, to jump right into the vicissitudes of discourse and treat trivialities as if they were truly important because, why else talk about them?
I told her "English," I'll never see her again, nor would I recognize who she was if I did.
5 THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR TODAY
11 years ago
3 comments:
Keep venting Bro
This is a good one. The end builds and builds as a poem would on that same subject and the language is quite tight to that effect. There is a poem to be had here, especially in that second to last paragraph. Or there might be a whole essay. How do I know? When I read, "I haven't had a major in three years" and "But here I was. An undergraduate again"--I thought, I wish I had written that. And then I thought, maybe I can by way of essay. Anyways and anyway, good stuff.
that girl's a jerk who won't make it past organic chemistry...and I'm probably an even bigger jerk...
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