Tuesday, December 23, 2003

This Guy You Were In Love With. Through Some Binoculars Day!

You hit the road five years ago and you completely cut yourself off from everyone who loves you and everyone you've ever loved. Necessary, you thought, in order to successfully locate and exact vengeance upon your father's assassin.

But you still think you see people you used to know. You're constantly doing double-takes, primarily at tourist attractions where people hold still long enough for you to look twice and declare the match a false positive. Is it a need you have, a longing for the life you left behind that you think you see it in the face of every midwesterner with a fanny pack?

Well, it wasn't a longing that put Patrick there on the lip of the Grand Canyon today. The funny thing was, when you saw his shape, you thought it could be Leonard, your old supervisor at Strauss and Strauss. So you borrowed the binoculars of the little boy to your left and there he was. The boy who once ate a lot of pills to get you back (it worked). The boy who you proposed to, and who accepted your proposal (you never told anyone you were engaged). The boy who stole away your appetite for a year and a half after he left. While your love for Patrick might have been the most groundless and immature love you've ever felt, never will you feel so consumed by a trick of the heart again. The both of you are lucky to be alive.

And Patrick is lucky to be holding a little girl in a baby pack on his belly. And Patrick is lucky to be holding the hand of a little boy standing to his right. And Patrick is lucky to be taking a soda from the hand of a woman you've never seen before, a woman holding a cooler and handing out sandwiches to her husband and children.

And you're lucky to be looking through a pair of borrowed binoculars.

Happy This Guy You Were In Love With. Through Some Binoculars Day!