a firm believer in fate

"Sometimes words make things seem like less then they really are."

The half Japanese Skaneateles girl had schooled me once again.  Every so often she'd throw out these lines that I would brood over for years to come.  I was riding my bike in front of the Jordan-Elbridge Big M when her friends yell some shit about my shirt.

An odd case of mistaken identity leads me to jump into a PT cruiser with a bunch of strangers with the promise of Taco Bell.  It might as well have been a van with candy.  Dave, a horn player in a local ska outfit was behind the wheel.  We proceed to one of their friend's houses to feed their pet fish.  At least one of the fish turns out to be dead.

"I couldn't just piss while it was laying there in the toilet," Dave jokes.  

Onward to Taco Bell, I forget my wallet but luckily my meal gets comped by the new homies.  Days later we hit up the Skaneateles field days.  A town I had been driven through a bajillion times but never stopped at.  The old man had grown up on this stereotype of the American dream in the early 70's.  How?  Everybody I meet there seems to have their shit together.

AOL messenger wasn't exactly texting, it was something else.  Somewhere between bad sixties beat poetry and the modern social media extravaganza there existed the last honest place of adolescent expressionism.  That's where my heart died and I've been trying to revive it ever sense I guess.

"We're a tight group because we don't sweat the little things." 

Thanks, Amy.

Oddly enough she grew up in Endicott, way before she flew off to university in the Netherlands like a bat out of hell.

"I <3 Binghamton," she's quick to throw back at me. 

Hopefully we meet up again in this life or the next.