"lingers in the morning like a melody."

Easter morning I stood in the shower, staring up into the water.

Tears didn’t fall. My heart, however, did.

I had been restless in sleep and I had been – taken. And as it came to me – this feeling of want – it countered every wall I’ve ever built, every feeling I’ve refused to have felt, every bit of protection I had ever erected for myself. It countered [what was] me.

I realized, for once, that I want to be pursued. Not by the guy from high school that I couldn’t ever seem to feel the same way about. Or the congressional campaign manager who calls me every other day. Or by Cute Boy [who called last night].

But by someone who makes my heart stop.

And though it may seem as though I’ve been scouring the city, looking for this heart-stopping guy, a year ago you would have found me sitting on my bedroom floor on a work night, after a jog, painting and alone. And since, that restlessness has caused me to seek out.

My dreams lately have been strange. Saturday night I had first dreamt that I sat in the house of a boy I’ve never met, alongside his family. He neither spoke to nor looked at me. Then, suddenly, I lie in a bed in a place resembling a bar. Mr. Beat’s band was playing and it was the first time I’d been to a show of his in a long time. To my left I looked and there was Dreadlocks. Looking up at him, I caught his attention, saying, “You’re driving me crazy.” And looking down at me, my leg revealed by the covers, he spoke saying, “You’re driving me crazy.”

We were motionless as we watched Mr. Beat play, his back being all I could see. Suddenly, the music faded away. They were still playing but you couldn’t hear anything, as though all their sound was filling a box and being saved for someone later.

Once I lifted my head again they had cleared the stage and cafeteria tables had taken its place.

And then there we were, sitting in a booth, starting on a game of poker, pretending we [Mr. Beat and I] were together. He pretended I was his.

While I looked after him, dumbfounded.

vintage index.

Last night I got a phone call from a guy I know through my West Coast Best Friend.

“Are you as bored as I am?” he said to me, invitingly. “If so, come hang out.”

After a good dinner with a friend of mine and her husband, I did just that. I met him out and drank a few beers with the guys. A welcome distraction from the grown up world.

You know they offer some statistic – which I could attempt to butcher – that for every bout of conversation that lasts some number of minutes, there will be a moment of [awkward] silence to follow. In those bits of silence last night, one of the guys baited the question to us all. “Why are we so bored?”

One offered the need for a change in job. For another, exhaustion. I seemed to think, to myself, it was instead a boredom, floating on the waters of my surface, that was caused by my hoping endlessly and to no avail.

I think this for a number of reasons. When we give up hope what is left? When we’re exhausted we’re hoping to remedy that, perhaps with sleep. And then, in turn, hoping leaves us exhausted.

“Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome. That’s what momma always says. She says that beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts the most. Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up. And it will..” birdee pruitt, hope floats.

When it comes to work, I am more so hoping for successes to come of my current roots than for me to be uprooted to find success. When it comes to my home life, I am hoping for mutual respect. When it comes to my family, happiness and health are what I hope for.

When it comes to men, I want neither to hurt or be hurt. Though it’s happened, both ways, I keep hoping. Accidentally Me asked that I give a play-by-play of sorts. Really, a reference to who I have hoped for and who, sometimes, has even been left hoping for me.

Mr. Athletic – My first true crush. Also known as my first kiss. Mr. Athletic was the first guy that annoyed me to the point of I can’t date you. And our relationship might, in fact, be an accurate representation of my entire dating experience. What I do know is that I apparently hurt him more than I was left hurting.

Mr. Perfect – Some might know him as the one I keep going back to. Some might think of him now as Patrick Dempsey. He’s the one I never think I’ll be good enough for. But, in all, he’s the guy I’ve known the longest. He’s the guy I couldn’t just casually date. And, to be honest, the thought of a date once shook my core. Sometimes I really think he just gets me, or reads me, too well. I can talk to him. Like, really talk. And if you want to know, I think this says it all.

Mr. Beat – Also known as, the crash. The friend, the best friend, that showed me in his own way that I just wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t worth his making time for me. That I could be his best friend and there with him every day and then – suddenly – a nobody. We went from talking about everything to nothing. The truth is that he hurt me. And I didn’t deserve it. But I still have to deal with it.

Good Lookin’ – With him, things just faded off. He was good on paper from the very beginning. I met him through my dad. We’re in the same line of work, though McHottie still swears we’re just on different levels. Really, if I’m awkward he’s got me beat. Still, he makes me nervous. I wanted to hide from him when he spotted me just last week. And that nervousness, that kindred awkwardness, keeps some story there left to tell.

Dreadlocks – My once super secret special crush. I entertained that whole idea for an instant. A this will never work but I’m going there anyway instant. I booted my norm, I envied his heart, and I turned to hate his docility. All in all he wasn’t so much as a lesson learned, nor a learning experience, he was just something fun.

Cute Boy – I called him a Brett Favre look alike and I still swear by it. He’s got the scruff. And the truck. And the job with John Deere. But you know, I think he’s another one of those good on paper guys that just, doesn’t, make my foot pop. And I don’t think he got me – er – gets me. Maybe I’m putting a wall around myself with this one. Maybe I’m jumping off too soon on the basis that we don’t seem to want the same things, that he broke promises (more than once), and that he’s, perhaps, too good to be true. But in any event, I think that I wanted it to work more that it felt like it did, and that I realized, through it all, I just want ever
ything to be.. natural.

“People fall in love. They fall right back out. It happens all the time.” birdee pruitt, hope floats.

this is my honest.

“The truth was that I’d been spending years running away from myself. I hid myself in drama, silliness, stupidity, banality. So afraid to grow up. So afraid to involve myself in relationships where I might be expected to give the same love I got – instead of sixth-grade shenanigans. I bored myself with all the when I grow up nonsense, but I was worried it would never happen even as I longed for it.” megan crane, fremenies.

The weather here Saturday and my fading headache led me to sitting on the front stoop of my house, some time after devouring a burrito and spinach cheese dip (my mouth waters as I type), talking on my phone in short sleeves, gold flats, and a glass of water by my side. The water, of course, being meant to help with the beer I had consumed the previous night. The phone, being used to return phone calls received from Christina which I had missed by either being comatose in complete silence on the couch a few hours earlier, or knee deep in the aforementioned burrito with Crist just prior to the hour at hand.

“So.. tell me.. what happened last night?” Christina asked me.

“Well, you know, I went out for a drink with Cute Boy. A drink, turning into to many drinks, turning into him not being able to leave for the farm until the next morning. Stellar.”

“I talked to your brother this morning,” she offered. My brother had been in town for the night and we had ended up meeting him out at Pub after several hours and bottles and pitchers at Salty Nut, directly following work. I knew, when headed to Pub, what I was getting myself into. I knew, and I went anyway. I went and saw him, my once super secret special crush Dreadlocks. Who, when I saw, said to me, “It’s been awhile. Since November 24th, actually.” Exactly. And who, for the rest of the time, was just, seemingly, awkward.

Or maybe that was I.

Whichever the case, I knew what to ask next. “Did he say anything about Cute Boy?” I’m not much one for dating and so, not much one for introducing anyone to any part of my family.

“Yea,” she said. “He said he was nice. But also, that he didn’t think you seemed to like him as much as he liked you.” And as the words fell out of her mouth, from someone that knows me sometimes better than I know myself, I knew that they were right. That my brother had been right. That even as I went through the motions of everything, of the game, my heart seemed to be saying something different all along. But who am I to listen to my heart?

I knew – know - that I do like him. But how much is something I’ve been trying to gauge all along. It’s something I’ve had a problem with as long as I can remember. Something I just can’t understand. Talking again to Christina last night, the feeling again swept over me. That feeling of pure hatred for my inability to get that feeling, that giddy, foot popping feeling. Isn’t it about time I got to feel that too?

There are a lot of things, factors, barreling into these thoughts. The idea that the way I’d imagined things to be, the guy I’ve kept my sights on, may not be what or who I thought he’d be. And I’m okay with that. I am. Really. But not in this way. I have wanted, for as long as I can remember, for as many chick lit novels as I’ve read, for some perfect and romantic and passionate man to sweep me off my feet, to tell me that I’m beautiful and wonderful and.. genius. I have wanted someone to laugh with and fight with and.. fish with. I have wanted someone who could get along with my friends and waste away a whole Saturday.. and read, in complete silence, right by my side. I have wanted, what the roommate describes, to some degree, the redneck poet laureate. But the fact of the matter is, I’m not going to find the guy that likes hunting and Virginia Woolf. And I think I might just rather find the latter. And the latter is a vision that keeps bringing me back to Mr. Perfect. Who, for, it’s not Virginia Woolf, it’s M. Night Shyamalan. It’s not football, but baseball. And it’s not a beer at happy hour, but he knows my love for Diet Dr. Pepper and he’ll bring it to any gathering just for me.

And we joke. And we laugh. Even when we argue.

He knows when to check on me. But Cute Boy? When he didn’t call last week? His reason was because he thought I was mad at him. And that when he’d dropped by my office with the promise to be in touch, he thought the way I was was about him. And not about the fact that I was in the beginning stages of the stomach flu, had not slept the night before, and was only in the office to take a conference call. And had told him, already, all of this. Read: Nothing to do with him.

We’re not on the same page now. We’re not, and I don’t know that we will be. When he called me last night on his way home from the farm, he asked me what I was doing. “Half watching an ETV special on Jane Austen, and half reading a book that’s open and resting on top of me at the moment. But I’m about to finish it.”

“When did you start?”

“Yesterday,” I answered him, thinking how antisocial I had been at the lake the previous night, once I’d gotten far enough into Frenemies.

“Whoa. I don’t read,” he offered. He doesn’t read. Well, you know, neither do my brothers, really. But you’ve got to read something, be it the NY Times or FoxNews online. I mean, everybody reads.

Finishing my book after we’d hung up, and listening, in the background, to the narrator speaking of Northanger Abbey, my mind seemed to be taking it all in. The passion, felt by Henry in Frenemies, that despite his differences with Gus, her perception of him, their witty banter, he considered himself changed when he was around her. And Catherine, in Northanger Abbey, who was captivated by one of her suitors, also named Henry, and by his knowledge of literature and history and the world.

Now I sit, in the beginnings of one of my favorite months, head spinning, wondering what I’m supposed to do now.

on the right foot.

A few weeks ago I got mad at a guy in my office when he told me I was “too picky” when it comes to guys. My great comeback? “Well you’re sexist when it comes to girls.”

“How do you figure?” he asked me.

“You don’t think girls know anything about football. It’s like the he-man-women-haters-club when it comes to football chat here.”

“That is not true. You said Proctor would be bust last year as QB and you were right about that. You were the only one that was. I talk to you about it.” Honestly.. I was right about my football predictions last year.

“Well you’re just like the other guys – off to play golf and leaving the girls out.”

“I’ve told you, let’s go play sometime. Bring your clubs to work and we’ll play hooky.”

“I’m not much of a play hooky from work with a coworker kind of girl,” I told him.

“You haven’t proved I’m sexist. You are picky, though.”

“And how do you figure?”

“You dropped that boy from upstairs.”

“No. That boy from upstairs didn’t want me.”

Last night I was sitting and thinking about all the goings on lately. I was talking to the 15 year old I’m babysitting (if you can even use the word) and we were talking about the kids at her school – what they’re doing, things they’re saying, that petty stuff that makes you hate high school – and I thought and said, with such ease, “I don’t miss that.” She’s a cheerleader but not a pot stirrer. She’s a beauty but she’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen. And even she’s going through it. Those mean and conniving friends. The peer pressure.

The growing up.

One thing I’m thankful for from high school – the one thing – is that I stayed true to me. I didn’t compromise who I am. And I wish that, so much, for her. I wish that her purity and her kindheartedness will not be affected by the gossipping and the cliques. I wish that she’d be picky about people too.

Lately, truthfully, I don’t think I’ve been so picky.

Mr. Beat, as much as he meant so much to me, was nothing like what I wanted him to be. And it can be as simple as his handling of friends and as petty as the fact that he can’t just blend in anywhere – like at a hunt club or a hip hop concert. The boy didn’t even like country music.

Good Lookin’ was oh so handsome. But his poshness was not quite a match for my quirkiness. And it’s one of those little things I picked up on.. but quickly dismissed. I mean, if there’s something about him that’s too polished for me, what is that saying about me?

Dreadlocks. I don’t even know if I need to say anymore, do I? I loved his view on life and the things he loved (fishing, music, Clemson). But his reaction to events? His nonreaction, really? It was rude. Things about him were just rude. Y’all taught me that much.

I can meet a guy and think he’s cute and nice.. and then all these words that people have said to me start flooding in.. “too picky”, “shallow.” They all kind of.. leave a mark. I guess it’s ridiculous to think that it can be just as easy as 1-2-3. I’m not expecting perfection, but I am happiness. I want someone to like me that’s kind and fun and likes to stay busy and take road trips and play outside and be silly and at the same time kick back. “I am someone who is looking for love, real love.. ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love..” (Carrie, Sex and the City).

And that’s that.

go in peace, go in joy, go in love.

Today I was telling one of my work mamas about the whole Saturday night debacle. Lastly, I mentioned to her my super secret special crush Dreadlock’s reaction, or lack thereof, to the whole course of events. So she said to me, “You don’t need to be crushing on him anymore then. You want someone that’s going to fight for you.”

I mean. Yes. And no. Yes and no.

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted the Romantic Comedy, the passionate declaration of “I love you”, the foot pop and the swoon.

Part of me wants that whole “love means never having to say you’re sorry” attitude. All of me, really, wants that. Passion. That’s what it is.

Jennifer Cavalieri: “You’re gonna flunk out if you don’t study.”
Oliver Barrett IV: “I am studying.”
Jennifer Cavalieri: “Bullshit. You’re looking at my legs.”
Oliver Barrett IV: “You know, Jenny, you’re not that great looking.”
Jennifer Cavalieri: “I know. But can I help it if you think so?”
love story.

It’s the fighting the passionate fight and the making up.

I remember sitting on a bar stool in my parents’ house not that far back, with Mom in the same room cooking up a storm. And as I sat, glued to the TV where Love Story was playing on one of those classic movie channels, my lips moved with Ali MacGraw’s. I cussed right along with her. And my mom.. she didn’t say a word. In a house where I’m not supposed to cuss.

But the point is, there’s passion in those words. There’s passion in fighting. There’s passion, measurable, in that which we can see.

But in silence? There can be passion, too, in that. In making the statement that you avoid conflict. In proving your choice. In remaining impartial.

I just have to ask, of myself, what is for the greater good?

"my feelings show."

“It’s lucky I only have one of these, he said. I can see where you’d never think about anything else.” story people.

I haven’t always been that sensitive. When I was younger, I would yell when my brother touched me. But all in all, I didn’t let the actions of my school peers affect me. I kept on keeping on. That’s all you can do. I didn’t care [or didn't show I cared] that they, for reasons unbeknownst to me, decided to exclude me. I’d go on to my tennis match that afternoon. And I’d win. And I’d be me. And that’s that.

I don’t remember crying much at my grandfather’s funeral. I remember crying when I found out, but not again. My mother says when I was younger, I only cried when I wanted to go to bed.

When Chad died it was if things changed. Something inside me shifted. I don’t remember crying when I found out about his brain tumor. I remember shock. I remember hope. I had a lot of hope back then. But I also remember his funeral, the way my body wouldn’t stop shaking, the way I cried; we all cried.

I went to class the morning of his funeral. I was going to get early release – the things you had to do in high school to follow the rules. I remember going to art class and seeing Mrs. Fritz and breaking down, wanting to curl into a ball. I remember her looking at me, knowing me so well after those years of me practically living in her classroom. I remember sitting at her desk, trying to stop the tears.

I cry at the drop of the hat now. Tears well up in my eyes. It could be nervousness or stress. It could be fear. It could be any of the things normal people can handle with grace. I cry. If I really think about my mom and all that she has gone through, still suffers through, I cry. Sitting at home over Thanksgiving, realizing for the first time since I can remember that our beautiful lab Keeley was not there, I cried.

My eyes just well up. And that’s that. Sometimes no tears fall. Most times no tears are seen. It’s just something between me and the emotion.

Saturday night, I cried.

The night seemed like every other. That and the fact that Clemson was able to pull out a win in what seemed a game where neither team really wanted it. I sat around for awhile after the game before it was time for us all to start cleaning up. Tents were put down, grills were sizzled, trash was picked up. Goodbyes were said.

Heading to my car I found my brother in the back seat with a headache. And before I put the car in drive it became clear that a hat was missing and Tina didn’t want to leave without it. I tried looking for it, couldn’t find it. I tried waking Daniel for help. He was groggy. Tina opened his door to look and then shut it, hitting his head.

And a switch flipped.

I’ve seen him mad. Heck, I’ve made him mad. But bourbon brother is not my favorite. He just, he became this evil person that, as much as I love him, I don’t like. I called out to his roommate and neighbors who were loading up in their cars around the corner for help and they came. They came to tame his anger and it just infuriated him. They came to help me and for that I could not be more grateful for. I realized just how much I really care about those guys.

But I don’t understand it. I can’t. I can’t fathom it. It embarassed me and him. I don’t get how this good, normally happy and kind and sweet person, can just turn. At the drop of a hat. On everyone.

I stepped away. Crying. Receiving hugs from guys that are not my brother. Comfort from people that are not my family.

I looked to one of them who I think so much of and said, “I just.. I can’t handle this. I hate drama.” And, looking back at me, he said with such honesty, “I’ve heard girls say that before. But you’re the only one I’ve ever believed.”

It’s interesting, though, who stood there. Who stood up and who walked away. Dreadlocks walked away. He was there.. but it’s not him. And of the 7 of us that were out there.. he just.. walked away.

What did my parents say to me when I talked to them? With faces full of disappointment in the fact that I, at 23, had to turn to them for help in this situation, they asked me, “What did you do [to him]?”

[tribute to clemson football 2007]

the other side of the pillow.

At my conference in DC on Friday, I heard an incredible speaker named Dr. Frank Luntz as he described the blogosphere to his audience as it pertained to our political world and then described bloggers as being “in need of breathlizers before they start typing.” I laughed because I know some (one) that do (does) in particular. Sometimes, we all have to admit, typing it out there provides us with clarity. So it makes relative sense to me. It sobers me.

Friday was a long day, made worse by a headache that began at 3:30 in the afternoon and didn’t go away until my plane started to land somewhere around 9:30 that evening. Fortunately for me, the Alieve I bought at an airport newsstand, the bottle of water I drank, and the nap I took in the airport (yes, I was that girl) as I waited for my flight and then, subsequently, on the plane itself, all contributed to making me a much happier girl and then, therefore, capable of making the 2 hour drive to Clemson following thus turn of events. When I arrived at Clemson at midnight, I had been up for 20 hours. To some, this is chunk change. For me, this is deadly. [Nap time at the airport saved my life.] I showed up at the apartment (everyone was downtown) and decided to visit with one of my brother’s neighbors for a few (he was playing a video game). Then I decided, time to sleep again. I put on my pjs, turned on When Harry Met Sally, and was then greeted by another neighbor who’d just come back from downtown and wanted to give me a hug and say hello. “Well, hello.” His girlfriend was in town from Tennessee so I went back next door to say hi to her. About 10 minutes later, I decided to try the sleep thing again. An hour and a half into that my brother, his roommate, and Dreadlocks came back from downtown and woke me up. Adoration swept over me again.

I decided somewhere along my car ride to Clemson Friday night that I am attracted to things that will not work out, things I can’t have. It’s almost too obvious a diagnosis. So similar, in fact, to the idea that I always pick the most expensive things in the store, the most costly purse of all at TJ Maxx. I have expensive taste in every area of my life. I also have commitment issues. I kiss the boy who doesn’t have my phone number. I like the guy I’ll never meet. I take a shot from the stranger whose name I can’t remember. And I’m okay with that. Because the thought of knowing they have a way to contact me and don’t is so much worse of a feeling than knowing that they can’t. Right? I’m attracted to the guy I’ll never see again.. because that really sweet one I see all the time? He’s just too close to home. Or I like that boy I have so much in common with but my parents will never approve. So all of these, I suppose, are fun for me. Why? Because I’ll never find myself committing to anything. I have too many excuses not to.

At the Clemson v. Wake game last week, I was sitting next to my mom in the stadium as a guy with dreadlocks walked up the steps. “Ew,” Mom said. And I found myself defending that which I never before would have. Maybe I’m becoming more accepting as I get older. Maybe I’m becoming more perceptive. Maybe I’m keeping everything at an arms reach, a great distance from myself.

“You have a serious fear of relationships,” the roommate said to me last night. No doubt. And I can’t really figure out where it all stems from. Is it just because I’ve never met anyone I want to be in a relationship with?

And why?

the little things aside.

“Best looking girl in the bar,” he said to me as we stood side by side in the crowded room.

“Let’s go,” he looked to me, as we walked out of the pizza place together.

“Hold my hand,” spilled from his lips as we made our way down the street.

Waking up the next morning, I wasn’t the girl with the smile ear to ear. I wasn’t the girl thinking how great things are, how lucky I am, how much fun it all is. I’m never, really, quite that girl.

I didn’t see him the next day, or the day after that. I won’t see him again until atleast this next weekend. Thoughts dance in my head as to whether I want to see him again, whether I want to go back there again. Swirling in my mind are the thoughts that I am still that girl, that naive girl in her tennis outfit, liking the boys in high school and then, once they asked me out, once I got them, never wanting anything to do with them again.

Is it attention that I need and then, once I get it, I am satisfied? Is it affection that I crave and then, just as soon as it’s given, I want myself back? Or is it, simply, me?

game day recaps.

USC

I think a few things need to be said here, right off the bat. You shouldn’t be rude to a friend that gets you a ticket and a parking space that sells for over $27k in a covered, air conditioned lot. When said generous friend asks if you can drive because their car, with Clemson stickers, doesn’t get around too well near Williams Brice, you shouldn’t huff and puff. You probably shouldn’t, for hours, leave and ignore someone who has been your best friend your entire life and another who is your current roommate for an old college roommate who, truth be told, wasn’t all that nice to you to begin with. And when you get in a fight with these 2 people in the stadium, first threatening to leave them because hey – you drove – and then proceeding to ignore them for the entire span of the game, that probably isn’t a great idea either. Oh and lastly, when someone offers to follow you home so that you can drive and drop off the vehicle of someone who let their gameday personality shine, calling them rude when they ask you how much further y’all have to go because they’re running out of gas just isn’t cool.

One would think these few things would come as no brainers. But let’s just skip to the good stuff.

At a tailgate where the average age was 26, gender being male, the roommate and I roll up to say hello to some friends. A lonely and cute looking blonde girl sits there, perhaps a token female for the moment. Looking at the roommate and me, she says in both a sweet and giddy voice, “I’m a freshman. Are y’all in a sorority?”

It hurt not to laugh. It hurt even more to keep it in once looking at the roommate’s facial expression. It hurt telling her we’d both done undergrad elsewhere. I kept thinking I should have told her that she should hurry up and find the friend of the friend that left her there because when we drove off she was holding hands with a guy that I’m pretty sure is somebody’s daddy. And I don’t mean hers.

Earlier that night (not by much) at about 11 pm, I got a text message from a guy I know well enough already to know I don’t like that said, “Are you going to the game?” What is with the lack of political correctedness in this town? It’s after 11:00 on a Saturday night. Really?

My response, being that I had just been to a football game was, “What game?” And his was, predictably, “The Clemson game.” So, yea, of course I’m going; I told him as much.

The next thing I know I’m looking at the roommate saying, “So this guy thinks that just because I respond to his text message that it’s okay to call me?” And when I didn’t answer, he proceeded to send me a pessage to “call [him].” When I said something to the affect of “no thanks,” he decided to call me a pain. Gee, thanks. In the words of Michelle Tanner.. “How rude.”

CLEMSON

There’s nothing like a quality football weekend. Taking in 2 games in 1 day? Been there. Loved that. 2 games in 1 weekend? That’s what I call good stuff. Especially when it involves Clemson. Anything that involves Clemson, I tell ya. And by the end of Saturday night, I couldn’t wait to get up there as soon as I could. I realize that I can’t explain it all that perfectly. I understand that few get it. I know that I won’t be able to have it anywhere else but there. That doesn’t mean that I can comprehend why. Within 5 minutes of being at my brother’s apartment I had the dishwasher loaded. Within 15, the place was filled with somewhere around 10 people. A few hours later I’d rearranged the entire den and mopped the kitchen floor. I even made him start on a load of laundry. The thing is.. something about that place, the quality of the people, the laughter, the way that even if you can’t get it done, you get it done, just doesn’t seem capable of mirroring itself in Columbia.

I laughed. For the first time about nothing. For the second when my friend the Dreadlocks, was telling me when we went out for a few drinks later that night that while “girls that smell like Bonnaroo” are always hitting on him, telling him how much they love his dreads, they won’t, “take him home to Mom.” He said it with such candor, such personally, such.. knowingness. He filled me with a joy all over.

John Belushi, Jr. walked in the door as he always does. Quietly, calmly, checking things out. He’s funny in an unsuspecting way. Since the last time I visited he’s grown a weird version of sculpted facial hair. The guys say it’s a rebellion against his ex-girlfriend. I learned that she, a very sweet girl who I very much like, had broken up with him with this: “If I don’t love you after a year, I don’t think I ever will.”

It’s a funny word. Love. I wonder if it meant as much before Natalie Cole put a spin on it.

Sitting at Merd’s tailgate Friday, I turned to see her boyfriend approaching with some friends. She had gone off for a second and he was supposed to be on his way back to Atlanta from California where he’d been for Sunday night’s Nascar race. She walked up, already talking across the lot to her parents where they sat near me, before noticing her boyfriend’s coworkers and friends standing there. Thinking to herself that it was random to see them, she didn’t even notice until he came up behind her who they’d brought with them. It’s funny.. the little things in life. It’s funny that it doesn’t exactly take much to show someone you care.

From tailgate to tailgate and gameday to glorious win, those moments that impress us the most, those tiny instances that change us affect us in large and small ways. And all I’ve been thinking lately is the one thing I don’t want to think about. The fact that it might come a lot more easily if it went shared.