Have you ever had a first date that was so good you just remember a feeling of warmth that spread through your chest and made your fingertips tingle? The soundtrack playing in your mind is just a muddled cocktail of laughter, snippets of songs you sang along to, car horns, and random nonsensical tidbits about another person that out of context don't make sense? The smells that still cling to the inside of your nose and transports you back is beer, fresh air mixed with tar, and the clean scent of laundry detergent that wafts ever so faintly as you bend your heads close to answer trivia questions?
The picture you see in your mind isn't the whole picture, but rather a smattering of small things that make up the other person. It is a bottom tooth slightly overlapping another. It is a fleck of gray hair that shows up only in the bright sunlight. It is a straight nose, unlike my own more, ahem, shall we say regal nose? Its long fingers that flatten out on the end and leave me wondering if it is hard to tap the letters on an iPhone key pad.
All these things crystallized in my mind make up the other person, but leave me remembering him as though he were drawn in charcoal and smudged around the edges.
I know we talked. There was never an awkward silence. But I don't really remember what was said. I remember snippets and moments. I did tell him about my brief, but glorious career as an archeologist as we wondered through the La Brea tar pits. And that I was the two-time state geology champion. He told me about his research, his godfather, that it makes him sad to think his children might grow up in LA and not have the chance to play in creeks, climb trees, get dirty, and catch lightening bugs. He didn't think I was crazy for having a sister who isn't actually related to me. But there were five more hours that we filled up with conversation that passed in the blink of an eye.
I heard myself saying I needed to be heading home, but not actually wanting to leave.
It was a first date that felt nothing like a first date.
The picture you see in your mind isn't the whole picture, but rather a smattering of small things that make up the other person. It is a bottom tooth slightly overlapping another. It is a fleck of gray hair that shows up only in the bright sunlight. It is a straight nose, unlike my own more, ahem, shall we say regal nose? Its long fingers that flatten out on the end and leave me wondering if it is hard to tap the letters on an iPhone key pad.
All these things crystallized in my mind make up the other person, but leave me remembering him as though he were drawn in charcoal and smudged around the edges.
I know we talked. There was never an awkward silence. But I don't really remember what was said. I remember snippets and moments. I did tell him about my brief, but glorious career as an archeologist as we wondered through the La Brea tar pits. And that I was the two-time state geology champion. He told me about his research, his godfather, that it makes him sad to think his children might grow up in LA and not have the chance to play in creeks, climb trees, get dirty, and catch lightening bugs. He didn't think I was crazy for having a sister who isn't actually related to me. But there were five more hours that we filled up with conversation that passed in the blink of an eye.
I heard myself saying I needed to be heading home, but not actually wanting to leave.
It was a first date that felt nothing like a first date.
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