If you knew me, you’d know I often say I peaked in elementary school—
top dog amongst all of the fifth graders; always a notebook in hand—my dog tag—the pages of which could barely contain the words seeping, leaping, pushing out of my fingertips, all but breaking skin; always walking in the comfort of feeling (knowing?) I am this, I am she, I got that.
If you knew me, you’d laugh, sure that I was, too—after all, laughter is my way.
You’d laugh, too, when you heard of my Friday night plans now, these days, fifth grade twenty years behind me. You’d laugh, sure that all these Friday nights—9pm, midnight or 4?—when New York City is just being reborn, when vibrant New Yorkers are resurrecting from the ho and hum of this day, this week, to find new life, a new reason to get up tomorrow.
But I am sitting on the edge of my bed in the DARE t-shirt I won back then for writing the best essay, out of all the fifth graders, about what I learned that year about not doing drugs, about holding on to who it is that you are with clarity like seeing for the first time. At me, alone in that t-shirt, teeing up my “Throwback Playlist,” choosing just the right song for this Friday night—Britney this time?—then leaning in so close to hear every note, to have every ho, every hum, cover me,
you’d laugh,
sure that it’s certainly not because I long to be back there, back then—
but because it’s all in good fun.