Gas station cigarettes sitting on the counter. We’d steal them every time we went in. The guy that worked there was my best friend’s brother and we all knew each other pretty well. One of us would talk to the brother, the other would carefully palm a couple of packs of Camel Wides into our pockets. The whole exercise was an effort in efficiency, combined with our financially short-suited situation that often left us several dollars short for the above board purchase of said sticks of tobacco.
We were kids. Smoking our summers away while our parents spent all day working to keep the lights on and the mortgage paid.
That was then. This is now. I can’t believe things are too different today with the exception that there are likely a large number of folks that don’t smoke today that maybe would have had they been the same age then.
I digress.
I digest.
I slip into a coma of dumping found photographs into my story on Instagram. Every fifth one is something I captured. Shared for twenty-four hours and then dropped off into the ether. Basket case. Basketball. Bargain basement. Leaving has come and gone and the leaves are all that are left, lying there in the front yard waiting to decompose and go back into the cycle. S. S is for sandbox. S is for sadness. S is for shaping the future. A giant sign in the front yard that means nothing. No permission granted. No request made. Three stakes and some screws and a goodwill offering. A math book. A match book. A matter of being and not wanting, but needing. To be seen. To see. To be heard. To hear. To wander about and reappear. The fourth summer was the hardest and it’s the one that shaped the outcome. Things got hard and you left, even though your tongue stayed.
Tungsten. Carbide. Titanium. The sad man sharpens his saw by the sandlot on Sundays.
Hiss. Snap. Scratch. Zing.
The door is open and always has been, but we all know you’re not walking through it.