Tax day today. I went on a bicycle ride with S and O after a useless class meeting. Redundant as they’re all useless. I hadn’t been on my bicycle since before winter, and I hadn’t ridden with friends for years, really—since college.
It was lovely out. Riding through the local neighborhoods past quaint and charming Buffalo architecture gave me nostalgia for a time that has never existed. I think fondly of this place between dreams: a land of perpetual near-twilight where I am around 10 years old and there are no responsibilities. It is always slightly before dinner (close enough so that I am hungry, but not so hungry that I am impatient). Nobody in my house is fighting or yelling, I have no work or I am done with all of my work, and all I have to do is lie in my bed with the window open to the gorgeous weather and read a book as the sun sets.
As we rode, O lagged behind S and I kept pace behind O. I was nervous though it had been years since my own bicycle accident and a year and a half since S’s. The sound of approaching cars still sent my heart jumping up into my throat. However, I stayed behind O and S, reasoning that if there were any hazards coming, they would be the first to die and I would probably suffer lesser injuries. Whenever O picked up speed, his burgundy velvet blazer (truly a signature look) would billow open and waft behind him like something out of a cartoon. O is pleasantly Danish, and I enjoyed this small detail which to me only accentuated his generally continental flavor.
We stopped at a tiny ice cream store near the place I go to get my dry cleaning done. I was surprised that it was alive and operating—most of the time when I pass it looks closed and dilapidated, but apparently the establishment hibernates through the autumn and winter. S reminisced about passing the ice cream stand in her youth as she was shipped by her parents to the ice skating rink every morning around 6 A.M. She would be gripped always with a feeling of bitterness that she had to be up early to practice figure skating instead of having some lovely ice cream. This is a feeling that I can sympathize with directly given my own personal history. Perhaps there is camaraderie among all who have lost bits or chunks of their childhoods to the ambitions of others. S and O had soft serve cones generously coated with sprinkles. I ordered cookie dough ice cream with oreo cookie chunks, but I’m fairly certain I was given cookies and cream ice cream with oreo cookie chunks. A reasonable mistake, but all the same—what kind of animal would order oreo cookie crumbs with their already cookies and cream ice cream?
As we cycled home it got dark and colder. The weather changes rapidly in Buffalo—as they say, if you don’t like the weather, wait half an hour. Under the intermittent orange spotlight of the streetlamps in my neighborhood I started whistling “Pure Imagination” from the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka film. Probably an unsettling sound echoing through the darkness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment