It’s Halloween night and we had 1 batch of trick or treaters. That’s it. One batch. The kids from down the hill. That ties last year. I guess we’re so far out that no one wants to come this far, but you know what? We gave out 4 pieces of candy per kid. If I were doing it alone, I would have dumped half the bowl of candy in their little bags and have been done with it.
I’m doing better than I was. Friday, well, Friday I wasn’t doing good at all. I tried going to work. That was a bad idea. I mean physically I was feeling fine, but mentally, I was gone. I would think things and my body would interpret them as totally different things as I typed. I had to save my job on a couple of occasions that day because I was in IMs with my boss and some unusual things were about to go through in the IM before I caught myself and changed them.
After work on Friday I went to Carlisle, PA, to see my friend Margie. We ended up seeing the Director’s cut of ‘Donnie Darko’ at the Carlisle Theatre. The Carlisle Theatre is an ancient movie theatre that does weekend shows, sort of totally community supported. The architecture and sound is straight out of the 1940s, but in some ways it made seeing that movie a lot more creepy and a lot better.
Half way through the movie I had to go to the bathroom, okay, totally trippy movie, ancient place, empty bathroom. I swear if I believed in them, a ghost would have popped out of the bathroom stall and literally scared the piss out of me.
So the movie was a trip. Margie and her friend Melissa enjoyed it. We went to a bar called the G-Man afterwards. Still kind of spooked. It was getting crappy and misty outside, which didn’t help any. We started talking about the movie, talking about time travel, etc., the storm got worse outside and I thought to myself, “Welp, if something weird is going to happen …”
She sat down next to Margie. 5’7″ bone thin, blonde cropped hair, big bluish eyes, mid-30’s, for some reason wearing a retainer … a dead ringer for that girl, that special girl from Jr. High. You nerdish guys know what I mean, the one, the one that you carried around a note to for at least a year but never could approach. The one, years, later, oh my god.
I didn’t catch her name, she sat with us in the darkened bar for about an hour. She knew Margie, I couldn’t hear her voice, but I was awestruck. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t freaked out, but damn, I mean with my mind out there thinking about time travel and her being the spitting image of a girl I would have given my life just to kiss when I was 14 …
Twenty year old memories suck. I was such a dip. I was worse of a dip this time. I didn’t even get this girl’s name to see if the off-chance of time travel or whatever was true. She was very much married, however, she was sitting with us as her husband moved to be with his friends at another table and there wasn’t yet room for her. I wish I could have said she looked in my eyes and there was some deep dark connection, that we did it right there on the table, but umm, no, that doesn’t happen. It was just a freaky coincidence and before I knew it she was gone.
We talked a bit longer after that and I started the 2 hour drive home. I hit light rain, which turned to heavy rain, which turned to heavy rain and heavy fog, which turned to heavy rain with heavy fog with lightning. The 2 hour drive turned into a nearly 3 and a half hour ordeal.
When you get into town here, you come around a dead man’s turn and right at that dead man’s turn there’s a scenic overlook where you can look down upon the down and see all the city lights. On good nights it looks like a constellation of stars. That night, the only way I knew It was even there was that I’ve driven that road so many times that I had the spot memorized. I can totally see how people in snow storms walk off mountains because if I had kept going straight, not knowing to turn, I would have gone flying off a cliff and into oblivion.
Thrashie’s death has me thinking about life and death. It is strange, it was the first major change in this house since my sister’s family moved out. Things were pretty stable and I’m just getting used to it changing. But I don’t want to die. I mean that would have been a great ending to the night (perhaps instead of dying I was scheduled to be time traveling to go back and talk to that blonde girl back in 1984), but really, I don’t want to find out at this point.
Heading to bed.
k9