As someone says, you can’t go home again.
I sat down at my childhood desk and looked at my childhood books. I had just graduated college and had to move back home, as I didn’t have a job lined up yet. I had broken up with my girlfriend a few months before, or, rather, she had broken up with me after she had discovered that I had cheated on her. A little “light” cheating, I guess you could say, except that I wouldn’t because I really am a good guy.
I guess I kissed Stacy because I was trying to hit the “EJECT” button as hard as I could on that relationship. We were a few months out from graduation and every time we went out somewhere nice to dinner, Angie would get low-key excited and nervous, because she wanted a ring. No, she expected a ring. And I wasn’t ready to give it to her.
I digress.
My parents were good people. They had left my bedroom entirely alone. Sure, I had moved some stuff around during the summers that I spent there, but mostly it was the same as it had been the day they drove me to college. Same browning newspaper clippings on the wall. Same basketball in the corner.
The day after I turned thirteen (because that day I was a man, haha - I am Jewish, after all), I had packed away all of my stuffed animals. Little kid stuff, I thought then. I don’t need this anymore. But I don’t know if it was some sort of self-preservation that made me keep that box, made me shove it into the back of my closet instead of having my mom take it to Goodwill. I wanted to go through it now, sort through the memories, maybe take some of my favorites out and spread them back around the room.
It would be hard to squeeze back into my childhood bedroom. But, really, I had no choice.
Loading comments...