I am walking to the library today, and it must be one of those times where you have an encounter with the supreme, you know, in some moment you are able to transcend the normal day to day reality that so often stifles us, and you just see humanity and reality in its naked glory. I was listening to music (that music that makes you think, at that moment, you are in a movie and something really important is going on), real poignant stuff, and I am looking at all the faces passing by. One girl, her white headphones bobbing in her ears, she looks sideways at something in the grass as I pass. Right then—I’m reminded of being a kid. It’s winter. It’s a snow day. The hill by my house, me and my best friend (whom I never talk with now, even though we were best friends up until about 3 years ago, now I never talk to him, he has new friends), me and my best friend are building a jump and using our sleds as snowboards. My mom has bundled me up, she’s put my mittens and hats and boots on, she’s said, I hope you stay warm. She’s said, I’ll make you some hot cocoa with marshmallows when you get back in.
Me and my best friend are zooming down the hill, standing on our sleds, and maybe sometimes getting a few inches into the air, but the snow of the jump just keeps breaking, crumbling in the middle. We go up to the top of the hill. That last part of the hill is woods. There is a trail. We go to the top of the hill through that trail and the first ride down is always slow, you just go and then stop, and you have to push with your hands, because the snow is fresh and there aren’t any tracks. It snowed all night. It’s a snow day at school. Minnesota, where I live, they don’t have those. Snow isn’t a rarity. We don’t get snow days.
Maybe when I’m older I won’t even live in Minnesota.
We go down and back up and then we go down again. The snow is slick now. Our sleds go fast. We get so much speed. We are going down a mountain. I think, this is what it’s like if planes were convertibles. I get down the hill, and this time the jump stays, because I fly off it and over the bushes, over the street, and land, ten years later, I’m twenty and in college and I’m going to the library. I could have gone to a different school and my whole life would be different, I would have met different people and fell in love with different people. But those people are the same, aren’t they? You take what life gives you. God gives you lemons and you make lemonade.
I am walking to the library in college and I am seeing a girl look at something in the grass as I walk past her, and I never talk to my best friend anymore, and I haven’t drank hot chocolate with marshmallows in years.
