My 3.20.14

The smell of Old Spice body wash reminds me of summer camp. I was 14. My body had just started changing and I got contacts just before school let out.

I brought my guitar just like the year before. That was my thing. My favorite website was Newgrounds and I still secretly loved pro wrestling.

When I got to Kentucky, I decided that I liked a girl, Kelly, who had red hair. At least I thought that I did. Until she showed no interest. So I moved on and liked Leah instead. No luck there either, but I kept trying anyway. I didn’t talk to Kelly for the rest of the time there. On the last day right before my best friend’s mom picked us up, Kelly passed me a note and told me to read it only when her hockey player brother had picked her up.

Her handwriting looks like Helvetica’s fat second cousin. The dots weren’t hearts, in case anyone was wondering. But in pink gel pen the note said, “I liked you all throughout camp.” I threw it away. I wish I had saved it. It would make a good keepsake for my kids, especially if I end up having a son.

My coworker Josh walked by me today and whatever cologne he was wearing took me back to Camp Ernst. I decided to write it down because maybe the next time I remember will be when I’m thirty-four. And I think by then I would have forgotten that I had thought of it today, and will have tried to pass it off as something I had not thought of before. Well, maybe it’ll mean something a little bit different by then.

I really want to be a bit more honest. Maybe straightforward is the better-suited word but I think that ladders up to honesty. I haven’t been lying, but I feel that I’ve existed in a limbo that hasn’t produced anything of substance. A thought has crossed my mind that this is a quarter life crisis, but then I realized I haven’t the slightest clue what that means.