Don't Forget to Remember

We are not enough.  We cannot hold everything that we do and see and touch and experience and hear and feel.

We are not enough.

These bodies of ours - they are too frail.  They are too small.  They are not enough.

I stare at my face every night before bed, before washing off the day and my makeup and my sweat and my worry.  Before the washing I look at my nose and my chin and my cheeks but never at my eyes because I don't want to see the wrinkles that might someday be there soon because I age everyday we age we get older.  I don't want to see them.  But I don't want to miss them creeping on.  I am between wanting to be warned and the dread of being surprised at their sudden arrival.  The creases between my brows, the feet of crows crackling out of the corners, the etched in parentheses quoting all those things that I said and I laughed and I screamed and I whispered.  All those things leaving their mark on my face.  I don't want to remember that way.

I forgot about a mole on my neck.  Had it always been there?  I don't remember it being there, in that spot.  I remember having it, sharing it and its place on our necks, the Vanderbosch women, moley necks and wrinkled chins and large front teeth.  But it wasn't there, was it?  I have stared at my face for years every night and I forgot it was there.

And then just like that, for no reason at all, I am shot back, back to that night those nights weeks months when he and I were together.  A remembering that I might have forgotten.  A part of us.  A part of my story.  A chapter whose pages had been stuck together and mashed up in between remembering to pay the utility bill and my sister's birthday and the time that I hit my first ball that muggy afternoon at softball practice the clink and connection and joy of metal hitting leather.

I was a baby when I was with him, so young and so naive and so innocent and so sweet. And we didn't want to say goodnight.  We said everything but goodnight because then it would be the end and it couldn't be the end.  And I remember wanting to be as close to his body as I could, that if we separated if we disconnected if we came apart then the whole wide world would fall apart and I would crumble right there in the alley in front of the bar where he lived and slept above it where he was without me and would go up and be alone and I would have to make my way back to my own room and I didn't want that to happen.  I wanted to melt into him. Through our winter coats and past the small melting flakes of snow that he said he hadn't seen in ten years because it didn't really snow there but I brought it with me, all the way from the States and I brought them for him.

And I don't want to forget those things.

Then I remember the cab ride.  That horrible, disastrous, achingly depressing cab ride when you were sitting next to me a thousand feet away.  It was our last trip.  The last time we were going to go somewhere and be something and see something and feel something together.  Our togetherness was ending.  That trip, that moment in the cab, as I stared out at the void of night falling over Lake Michigan with the life and the lights and the noises and the hope for a bright tomorrow of the city on the other side of the cab, the side of you, the side with you, that I could not look at.  I could only look at the dark.  I could only look at the night married to the depths of the lake.  I could only see the sky and water melting together as if they were always meant to be the same and together and joined.  I could not breath in that back seat.  I could not move.  I felt you over there but you were so far.  We had separated.  We had been broken.  The cord between us had been cut and there was nothing that either of us could do to repair it.  We could only sit there.  In that cab.  Alone together.

And I don't want to forget that either.

Because forgetting that thing, forgetting that hurt and that pain and that ache and that void would mean that I forgot how deeply I could feel.  It would mean that we hadn't meant anything at all.  It would mean that I wasn't capable of feeling or caring or wanting to join my life with someone in a way that truly meant something, in a way that was preferable to spending my time with any number of somebodies or alone because you were someONE.

So I remember.

Horses and Denim Skirts

I have made the same joke, probably a thousand times, when I tell people that I was homeschooled.  I never volunteer the information unless it's in some sort of defense for not knowing some strange rite of passage that all other "normal" high schoolers went through.  It usually comes out when people ask what high school I went to, or where I graduated from, or where I grew up.  I went home for high school.  I graduated from my dining room table.  I grew up everywhere.

But the joke, the funny-ha-ha moment comes right after I give the damning information that I did not have a locker or report cards or lunch hour but actually received my education from my parents and myself.  The joke serves to soften the blow that they may not have a point of reference in discussing my upbringing and education.  And it goes something like this:

"I was homeschooled actually.  Yes, for ten years.  Second grade until graduation.  But don't worry, I don't like horses or wear denim skirts."

Inherently, there is nothing wrong with denim skirts or horses.  However, coupled with being homeschooled, you run into a bit of a stereotype.  Most "homeschoolers" or at least the ones that I encountered in Alabama and Indiana, did wear denim skirts and did love horses.  They didn't know how to make and keep friends.  They loved their parents and siblings - a lot.  They were usually religious in some extreme way or another - and I had met them all, from a Wiccan bi-sexual with purple hair dancing naked in the moonlight to the devoutly Catholic friend I made my junior year whose sister (one of nine other siblings - God bless Catholic's opinions on birth control) wanted nothing more than to become a nun and the man who eventually knocked her up wanted to be a priest.  And the horses - I can't quite explain the horses or homeschoolers' fascination and love for them.

But even in spite of the jokes, in spite of my attempts to delay the inevitable judgment about my parents' choice to raise and educate me, I did, once, love that equine species.

I wanted to ride.

I wanted to have one.

I wanted to feed and groom and trot and brush my very own Black Beauty.

But my family was poor.  And horse riding lessons were not cheap, even in the most rural towns in Alabama.  But one day.  One early morning.  One miracle of a chance that my mother gave me, I remember being taken to a ranch, or at least I think it was a ranch.  Deep in the dark of the early morning.  Before the sun thinks about rising.  Right in the middle of everyone else's dreams.  During that hour that you wake up, afraid you've missed your alarm and sink back, relieved that you have another three hours before it will go off, a glaring and red reminder that you have another day week month year lifetime of work ahead of you.  I remember so little about getting there, being driven or setting up this experience that I must have been very young, probably less than ten-years-old.  I doubt I was even homeschooled at that point.  I was probably just another young girl, taken, and in love with those majestic creatures who stood tall above my small frame, all rippling muscle, rapidly moving eyes and knotted coarse tail.

However old I was, however I came to find myself there, I remember sitting on a footstool.  One of those plastic ones you buy at Lowe's to step up a foot or two or to allow a small child to brush and spit and rinse their mouths at the sink after they've learned to brush their own teeth.

I sat there on that plastic stepping stool and I watched a woman riding a horse.  It was Alabama then, it must have been because I didn't live anywhere else except there that I can remember and the places where I lived after, the memories are much more clear, much more concrete, much less filled with joy, and hope, and exhilaration.

And it was cold.  Sometime in December or January because I shivered, the entire time I sat on that stool.  I sat there, outside of the ring, on the other side of the fence, fifty yards or so from the horse and her rider.  And I watched them.  I watched her lead the horse from a slow walk to a trot to a steady gallop.  She worked the horse.  She rode her in a way that I couldn't stop watching.  Her body told the horse where to turn and to move and to go faster or slower.  I remember seeing the horse breath heavily with deep exhalations, the giant clouds of air bursting from its dark nostrils.  She was majestic, this mare.  She was beautiful.  Even in the cold, even as I sat shivering, watching, I could see the sweat on the beast, glistening beneath the light from the barn on the other side of the ring.  I don't know why I was there.  I never took a lesson.  I never got on a horse to ride and learn where to put my feet and how to squeeze my thighs and lean in and to one side or the other to get the horse to go my way.  But I do remember sitting there, feeling the hours go by as this woman rode her horse, and it really was that simple.  A woman riding her horse.  But I couldn't stop watching, I couldn't stop staring as they welcomed the day together, as they breathed in and out at the same time and moved their muscles in the same direction, feeling the cool dirt beneath their warm hooves and feet, panting, trotting in their measured pace in the dew-soaked air, damp and sweating from the birthing of the heated dawn from the chilled and cooler night.

I haven't thought about that early morning, sitting on that uncomfortable stool in the cold predawn air in a long time.  It is one of those memories that I might have lost.  One of those moments that reminds you that you were once young, and didn't care if people thought you were strange because of the school you didn't go to or the ways in which you dressed.  Just a memory.  Just another story.  Just another moment that is nothing more than a small joy and a remembrance of a brief childish wonder.

Dear Veronica...

Dear Veronica,

I am writing this in the third person because I think I am the only one you might listen to.  Open your mind, open your ears, quiet your worry, and listen to me, please.

Be kind to yourself.  Be forgiving and be patient.  You will be fine.  You will not fail.  Like your professor said in that kind email, you will never starve. If your body needs rest, let it sleep.  Do not feel guilt for taking time to adjust to this new schedule, this new job, this new life.

Sweet girl, take care of yourself.  Schedule that cleaning at the dentist.  Drink lots of water. Eat something green today.  But don't hate yourself for wanting to order pizza instead.  Sometimes pizza is good, sometimes pizza is necessary, (just not all the time).  You do not have to go and kill yourself at the gym for two hours every day and if you aren't feeling sore that doesn't mean you aren't working on your body.  Stretch.  Breath deeply.  Sit up straight.

You are only responsible for your own happiness.  You have always known that no one is going to take care of you - you never wanted that.  But remember, it is not your responsibility to take care of anyone else.  They will all figure their own lives out, and if they don't, that's not on you.  Do not regress and change your values and goals and look for a partnership because things are a little harder right now.  That is no partnership.  That is a crutch.  You have taken the steps to lift the heavy weight of your single-income financial burden and changed it so it doesn't feel quite so large, quite so overwhelming.  You can do this.  Like he said, you will never starve.  You are strong.  I will take care of you because I know better than anyone else what you need to be happy.

This is the only chance you get, the only go around.  And just because you aren't doing what you thought you would be doing at this age, just because you aren't using your degree, just because you aren't writing thousands of words and dozens of pages a day, it doesn't mean you are allowed to throw your hands up and give in to self-loathing.  Shaking those tiny fists at the universe will not change anything.  Nothing will be given to you if you pout long and hard.  It will only make YOUR day miserable.  If you want to change your attitude, your circumstances, your productivity and your life, that's on you, kid.  Small changes count.  A smile instead of a worried brow is a start.  This post is another step forward.  The practice, the stretching of those fingers as they strike your laptop keys is progress.  Even it doesn't feel like it, even if this isn't seen by anyone but you, it is enough.  You are doing the work, you are putting in the time.

Write your pages.  Every. Single. Day.  It often takes you less than twenty minutes.  And you have that.  You have more than that even though sometimes it doesn't feel that way.

You have to go to work.  You are in a good place.  You are surrounded by good people.  You have more support than you know.

And finally, my love, be patient.  I know you want great things, I know you dream of wonder and mountains and stars and sailing on oceans.  That time will come.  Those things will happen.  You have been given this life.  You are so lucky.  Be grateful.  Be kind.  Be open.  Look around you for the opportunities that you might have been missing.  It is all going to be just fine.  It is all going to work out.  You are going to live a magnificent life.

Love,
Me

10,000 Hours

Write often.

Write in short fragmentary bursts.

You will never starve.

Read like mad.

I was once chastised by someone I was dating (if you even want to call it that) for not putting enough energy and time and effort into my passion - my writing. He had read somewhere, and I'd heard the theory before, that to be good at something, to make it a career or reach some sort of fulfillment then one must dedicate at least 10,000 hours into whatever it is they want to perfect.

10,000 hours.

That's roughly 5.47 hours per day over the span of five years - if you'd like to be ambitious and a real go-getter.  A little over 2 hours a day if you want to work at that "thing" over the course of ten years.  And so forth and so on.  I was in college for a little over 8 years.  Combining the time spent in class and the time spent studying, you could say I put 10,000 hours into becoming a really good student, a professional you might say.  If you don't believe me, I've got the diploma and the debt to prove it.

I have also worked in the restaurant industry in some shape or form for the past 12 years - ever since I was fifteen-years-old.  And considering it a rarity that I ended up working less than 40 hours a week, the total amount of time, roughly, that I've spent perfecting those skills is somewhere in the neighborhood of 24,000 hours.  Should I be surprised that I am now beginning to manage one?  And yes, I've had some very serious crises about the fact that I am not sitting in some dusty office somewhere with all the time and inspiration and support and resources in the world to allow me to joyfully (or insufferably) toil away with my pen and paper or typewriter or laptop.  I never thought that I would still be doing this for THIS  long.  Never in a million billion jillion years.  But I am.  And it's paying the bills (mostly).  And it is, truly, allowing me enough time to write.

There is no real point to this post except to remind myself how to use my fingers to type words down and through these keys.  To not consider today a total waste.  To keep my mind moving.  And if nothing else, to put in a little bit more time towards those elusive 10,000 hours.

Routine

“Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?”  She kept repeating that word every time she thought about how much more the mechanic said her car repair would be.  She was furious – he had told her it would be quick and simple, a routine oil change.  But when she went to pick her car up after flipping through a few magazines and sipping on her soy chai, his face told her that it hadn’t been so simple, it hadn’t been so routine. 

She planned on using that money to buy her plane ticket to Cabo.  She had always been a saver and the extra refund from her taxes this year gave her the extra bump in her account to feel free to reward herself, get away, relax, and sit on a beach somewhere.  But now, now all those thoughts of a golden tan, strong drinks with tiny umbrellas, and white sand beaches as far as her eye could see went up in the cloud of smoke as thick and depressing as the oil and dirt under the mechanic’s finger nails.  She cringed at the idea and exclaimed another “Seriously!?” when she thought about affording to do no more than sit on her couch and watch TV during her time off of work.  She could try to get her shifts back but that made her even angrier.  She couldn’t drive home to see her parents because they would still be working on her car, squeezing out those hard-earned dollars as the hours of paid labor was made up of smoking cigarettes, bull-shitting over last night’s game, and polishing wrenches.  It was supposed to be a routine oil change, she was being responsible.  She was supposed to be going on vacation in a month. 

*

Should he stand or should he sit?  He didn’t know what he should do while he waited for the news waited for the world to fall apart waited for the verdict that he already knew.  He stared at the framed picture of four happy faces - the doctor and his family, arm-over-shoulder-over arm under some cabana on a white sand beach somewhere.  They were all so happy, with their pink noses and sea-salt-wavy hair.  She wouldn’t smile again.  She wouldn’t feel the ocean again.  She wasn’t supposed to die.  Routine, routine, routine.  That’s what they kept saying.  But she died anyway.  One of the unlucky ones that falls into the slim category where things go wrong. 

His body began to shake, his vision blurring.  He couldn’t be in that room any longer.  He didn’t want to wait for the doctor, see his not-smiling face, hear his kind words.  But he needed to see her.  He needed to know it was real.  So he waited and stared at the tan bodies of the children and wife of the doctor that were still here still alive still smiling. 

After talking and talking and cooing and apologizing, the doctor finally led him to her room.  They had lied.  She looked different than what he had been led to believe about dead people.  She did not look like she was sleeping and she did not look like a monster.  She did not look at all like they all said dead people looked.  Her mouth was rigid and sagged slightly to the right.  The delicate skin beneath her eyes was purple, bruised and sunken.  He couldn’t think of what her skin looked like, he didn’t want to compare it to anything.  He just thought that it wasn’t a skin-color anymore.  It wasn’t right.  It wasn’t her.  He needed to get out, get away, move his body, his breathing still alive body away from her cold and dead one.

He walked through the doors, his legs stiff and moving slowly moving him away.  The tears started then as the air changed from sterile and conditioned to natural and humid.  He heard the automatic doors close behind him he could feel them, collecting, welling, gathering behind his eyes, no longer waiting to burst through and down his face.  He kept his mouth shut, tight and breathed heavily through his nose like a bull like a sleeping dreaming dog like a boar.  He kept walking, away from the hospital, down the street and into a neighborhood.  He walked past house after house, thinking about all the living people inside.  His chest and throat began convulsing, his body racked from the force of his sobs.  He couldn’t hold it in anymore, he didn’t know why he was trying.  He opened his mouth, wide and deep and began to wail, a deep and guttural wail.  His throat began to burn and ache from his screams.  It felt good.  He felt relief that his body could produce a sound that matched what his heart was going through.  And that small, strange-good feeling kept him going kept him from going mad kept him from being consumed and deep inside his own sadness and confusion.  She wanted to schedule the procedure early so that she could go home and watch a marathon of her favorite television show as she came out of her anesthetic haze on the couch.  This memory, this thought of her motives and plans and unfulfilled life renewed the grief and sent him stumbling on, wailing and crying some more.  He kept wailing the length of the sidewalk, and turned and walked another sidewalk and street and past houses and houses, all the while screaming, all the while wailing, all the while thinking that this is the only thing he could manage to do, the only thing he wanted to do.   

He didn’t see the young girl looking out her car windshield at him, slowing down, and stopping.  He didn’t notice her concerned eyes staring in her rearview mirror wondering what had happened – who had hurt him, who he had lost.  She couldn’t know.  She eventually put her car into gear again and drove away.  She was the only one that witnessed his grief.  She was the only one that thought to herself how lucky she was, to be worrying about small things like car repairs.  She wondered what had happened.  She would wonder who he had lost that day.  She kept thinking about him for the rest of the night and had nightmares about the sound that his throat made as he trudged down the street.

He kept walking in the opposite direction.  He kept walking until his shoes were muddy, until his head ached from dehydration and the screaming and the tearing at his temples.  It was supposed to be routine.  It was supposed to be quick and easy.  He was supposed to be home right now, heating up soup on the stove and mocking her terrible taste in television.  

She sat on her couch.  But she did not turn on the TV.  She just stared straight ahead and thought about that man.  She couldn't stop thinking about his mouth, how it looked so big and so wide that it wouldn't have been very surprising if it had opened up enough to consume his body, devour the rest of his head and shoulders and torso.  She sat on her couch and thought about him, her head hazy heart aching breathing short and low and shallow.   She didn't want to turn on the TV.  She wished she had never taken her car in for that oil change.  But she had.  So she sat on her couch and thought about that man.  

Yet Another Reason

photo credit

Everyone who knows me is aware of my aversion to children.  I have never wanted them.  And unless they are the offspring of my friends or relatives (and sometimes not even then), do I think children are particularly cute or interesting at all.  I rarely crack a smile at a tipsy toddler, or a drooling infant, or an adventurous little boy running around their father's feet in a grocery store.  I look at them like I look at any other random object that finds its way into my line of sight.  They are not something I am interested in or find particularly attractive.  As I said, there are exceptions to the children of my friends.  On a recent visit home I was able to spend quite a bit of time with a dear friend and her fourteen-month-old daughter.  And I fell in love with this little girl.  I remember holding her at eight (eight!) weeks and thinking how beautiful and lucky she was to have such an incredible mom.  She's almost two now and still just as beautiful.  But does that give me baby fever?  Maybe.  But a more likely reason for that warm and squishy feeling is that I can see in her and her mom the hope that she'll be one of the good ones.  She'll be someone that I'll want to know when she becomes a real, fully-formed person.  This hope, this glimmer that I can see in a child is rare though and I have only seen it a few other times.  The following account is a much more common occurrence in the state of children today.

I spent about two hours at Barnes and Noble today.  I was given the unexpected luxury of having the full day off from work to nurse a sore throat and thought what better place to spend the afternoon that a building full of books?  I nestled into a corner spot, one close to an outlet and grabbed a tea, a dozen magazines and books or so and prepared to spend a decent amount of time pouring over pages and perhaps do a little writing while I was there.  Unfortunately, I was barely able to make it through half of the first magazine I picked up before being distracted and admittedly disgusted by the spectacle of two children sitting with their mother and her friend just one table over.  The mother was a kind of hippie-geek and completely engrossed in everything that she had to say to her friend about every subject from thrift shopping to the many ways in which her husband should listen to her way of doing things.  All the while she droned on and on, flipping through pictures on her iPhone of renovated second houses and the gallery opening she attended last week, her daughters, who appeared to be ages four and seven, sat next to her in the following ways:

The oldest sat for the entire hour and a half that I observed this group staring at her handheld gaming device. She never spoke.  She never looked at her mother or her sister or her mother's friend or me or the people around her or the books or the cafe.  Her eyes were glassy.  She had bruisy-purple circles under her eyes giving the careful observer the feeling that she might not have gotten a lot of sleep recently.  At one point, her mother didn't like the way she was sitting and commented on this to her friend.  She was being talked about but not talked to, and without looking up from her game, readjusted her legs and continued to play.  She had the capacity to hear her mother talk about mothering but without actually taking the time to connect to her daughter.

The youngest was strapped into a stroller that she seemed to have outgrown several years before.  Her legs dragged on the ground and kicked out and were anywhere but where they should be.  She also had some sort of electronic device but threw it around with such clear calls for attention that her mother eventually just took it away from her.   She made noises, silly noises, grunts and wails and cries and all other annoying moans that resulted from her extreme boredom.  Nearing the end of my patience and willingness to watch this dysfunctional child-rearing, her mother reached down and patted her leg and exclaimed "Oh! She's wet!"  Now, I would have NEVER thought this girl was young enough to still be experiencing accidents. Her mother asked her friend if she could watch the oldest while she took the other to be changed in the bathroom.  I thought to myself as I left my comfortable spot to get away from this madness, that the little girl didn't need to be watched.  I doubt she would dream of leaving her seat and video game even if a circus happened to roll up in the very next moment and clowns began prancing around her on pink ponies.

For this reason, and many other examples of children I have seen cracked out on their iPhones and Gameboys and Xboxes and Facebook I will not bring a child into this world.  This world that I also am guilty of conforming to.  I will not lie and say that I too would have a mild anxiety attack if I realized I had left my phone at home by the time I got to work or out with friends.  I am not at all prepared nor interested in becoming a granola-crunching hippie that rejects all modern technology, climbs a tree, and lives without toilet paper.  But, I am aware of how much our world has changed in the truly short amount of time since I was the age of those little girls.  I consider how incredibly sad it is that the four-year-old's big sister couldn't be bothered to set her game down and entertain her little sister.  I thought how ridiculous it was that just fifty feet or so away sat hundreds of books, filled with pictures and colors and words and stories about far away places that they certainly would not read on that visit to Barnes and Noble and might not ever.

Another example is when I stood in line a few months back waiting for a popular local bake sale.  I watched about half a dozen children, waiting in various points in line with their parents all clutching their iPads and electronic gaming devices (and forgive me for not using the proper names for these things, I just don't care to research what they are or learn the names of what I consider to be paralyzing the next generation of "leaders" in this world).  They completely ignored the other children standing a few feet from them.  It wasn't that long ago that the only option that those children would have to entertain themselves was to actually makes friends with the kids around them and play. No single child broke away from the line.  They simply stood there next to their parents also staring at their phones, waiting to buy some cookies.  It broke my heart.

And for those reasons I will not have children.  I would like to think that I would resist buying such technological babysitters, and I probably could stay strong, insisting MY kids play outside, read books (real books too, not this Nook and Kindle nonsense) and bake mud pies.  But how likely do you think it is that by the time I get around to finding someone I want to blend DNA with to create another human life, raise it to the age of play-dates and park-time, I will be able to find other parents who share the same abhorrence for kid-tested-technology that I have?   I can bet it won't be very likely.

My sister and I were never given a video game system.  We never really had cable.  We played outside.  We played with each other.  We made up stories and we had a childhood.  Kids today have childhoods, but they're different.  They are more technologically advanced and as a result, they are less socially capable.  I have been questioned about the extent of socialization that I received after the decision my parents made to homeschool me from second to twelfth grade.  But I put it to the parents today, whether your children attend private, public or school at home, how much socialization is he or she receiving when you hand them whatever device is currently popular to shut them up, occupy their time, or "encourage their development"?

I will not risk raising a child in world where others their age are unable to talk to them unless it is from behind a screen.  Among other reasons...

The Yellow Shirt

Simon had always like the color yellow.  Which is why he went for the furthest stained cardboard box, one of many containing donated clothes from Our Lady of Lost Souls' quarterly drive for the homeless.  The boxes were stacked on a few folding tables in front of the church where they normally congregated to wait in line for their breakfast and dinner.  Nothing had price tags, it was all free.  But there were rules.  They couldn't start choosing until 2pm.  Whoever touched an item first, could keep it.  And they each only got to pick three things.  This would be his fifth time "shopping" at the church.

It had begun to get hot again, sticky, and his winter flannel shirt was beginning to feel too warm, and too worn in the elbows and armpits.  He needed a new summer shirt.  He hoped he could find a hat too.  He'd been told many times that he looked good in a hat.  It went well with his beard.  He was keeping an open mind for his third item.

He walked slowly behind the line of others looking silently through the boxes, keeping his eye on the furthest one with the yellow bit of fabric sticking out.  No one was really paying much attention to it.  He decided that he would touch that corner first as soon as he got to it, even though he couldn't be quite positive what it was.  He was pretty sure it was a shirt, he just hoped it wasn't too small.  It would be fine if it was too big, baggy shirts let the skin breath in the muggy Louisiana summers.  He finally got there, his eyes focused on it like a hawk and his fingers grasped at it just as Jerry went for it too.  "Sorry, man.  I touched it first."  Jerry was disappointed but he knew the rules and because he hadn't chosen anything yet, he didn't want to risk being asked to leave.

Simon felt triumphant as he pulled it out from beneath the piles of mismatched socks, patched jeans and discarded shirts with race dates, bands and festivals printed on the fronts and back.    Simon hoped that the yellow would be relatively un-printed.  It wasn't.  It had four large letters on the front, but they didn't make any sense to him.  He figured it was some abbreviation for a college he had never heard of or an organization.

He wore it for the first time the next day, a beautiful day, crisp and without any hint of humidity.  The shirt felt good on his back.  It was baggy, and almost brand new.  He wondered why someone would have given up such a great shirt in such a perfect color.  He had been wearing it for less than an hour when he heard drunken bellows and shouts coming from an oncoming trolley.  He was used to this but he didn't recognized the word they kept repeating.  "YOLO, YOLO, YOLO!" The four twenty-something boys yelled from their open window as the street car slowly came to halt at a red light near where Simon was standing on the corner.  They were raising their plastic cups full of hurricanes and sticky gin and tonic's to him, and continued to yell "YOLO" as the street car pulled away.  He raised his hand and waved at them as they rode on, high-fiving, and laughing with their gleaming white teeth and backwards caps.  He was happy to have been a part of their joy for a moment.  He smiled his own yellowed smile through his ragged beard, long and bristled and unkempt.  His face and pants were dirty.  His shoes worn and falling apart.  But his shirt was new.  It was his favorite color.  And apparently whatever was written on it gave cause for celebration.

He tapped a young girl, her eyes stained with kohl, her tights black and white striped beneath her safety-pin marked skirt.  "Excuse me, what does this stand for?" he asked as he pointed to his chest.

She rolled her eyes and took out one earbud.

"Fucking tweens came up with it a couple of years ago, it means 'You Only Live Once.'" she said as she replaced the earbud and turned back to staring down the street, waiting for the next car.

His heart sank and it felt like he had been punched in the gut. His smile disappeared as quickly as the boys had.

"Ya," he said to the girl, even though she wasn't listening, "you do only live once."