what you meant by that

I bit down a little too hard on the chicken wing and then that thing of my tooth is going to hurt for 5 minutes and serve as a general warning of you could have chipped your tooth, and you might, next time, so be more careful was happening to me, and the kid was staring at me, and I was staring at him back, but not really thinking about anything, and I was wondering if he was doing the same, but the hard part about kids is that they are letting on that they know less than they really do. Their brains are working better than you think, but they just have sillier ways of communicating that they haven’t ironed out yet.

What I thought was, people make you nervous, but they are just people. And some of the people are good at taking pictures that look like they’re from Hollywood, or that they are snobby, when really they just live in an apartment downtown, and they get lonely and spend the night cutting up their junk mail too, sometimes. But I wished I could see it for myself. I wish I could see that girl with the beautiful hair, what she looks like when she’s in sweats, and when she has some bad acne, and has been putting off her dishes for a while. I wish I could be there so that I could secretly feel better than her, and quit thinking her pictures were so Hollywood, because I knew her real story and had looked through her garbage when I used her toilet, and why did she let me in her house! (ha ha, what a fool) but then you also have to realize that you both have a common denominator such as having to do laundry, and having to get in your car when it is freezing in the morning.

You think that the kid is seeing this in you, and you start to have a question for the kid, but then let it die on your lips. You think that he can see that you are a bore, and that you are super fake but you want to just get out of there, like maybe apply another coat of lip gloss in the bathroom or maybe you will just stare at this TV or that TV and pretend you know what is going on in that specific sport that is appearing there, and wish someone would say something to you about NPR or coffee or working out or something that you know how to talk about, and you realize that you are a real person. Nobody knows it. Nobody knows how you dance in your kitchen. Nobody knows that you talk to your dog like it can really hear you. If they knew, they’d stop moving so far away from you. They’d start inviting you to their parties. They’d get their picture taken with you and they’d even like it. They’d stop breaking up with you. They’d realize old stuff and new stuff. You’d be at the same place, at the same time, looking into each other’s eyes, and it would be like the perfect vow to be together all the time, and they’d really mean it like you mean it.

For good. Because life isn’t really that long.