drd4u.com Blog

I try my best not to think about you; and that’s just not what happens almost every single day, I think about you.  My first reaction to that was, “this is obsession, you’re nuts, you need a life, you need to think about anything else,” and while those are normal thoughts, I suppose, they aren’t normal for me; you see, never in my life have I felt like this, ever; so somehow some way it had to get written down.  Oh I know that’s gonna rankle somebody somewhere, first off they will wonder if this is about them; they always do, never known them not to, you can tell them, right off, if they have to ask, it’s not; and they know it, so quit with the drama already; it’s not needed, the world is screwed up enough without it; and this isn’t about them; it’s about you, and you know it.  I try my best not to think about you, but that just doesn’t happen.

First reactions are funny aren’t they, don’t you think so, the first time we meet somebody, we think we are forming an impression.  I’ve always been told that, haven’t you?  I wonder if it’s true; maybe it is, I don’t know, it only occurs to me that most of the time my feelings about somebody don’t even come into play until the second or third time that we meet and usually then, it’s at some distance?  It’s not that my head over rules my heart, and it isn’t that my heart doesn’t exist; what has happened in my life is my heart is full up, in fact, it’s brimming over; and you have done that for me.  But in that mix is the memory of the first time we met, it was a cold day, seems like now, so many of them are; is the world getting colder?  Somebody told me as you get older you feel like it’s colder all the time; I think that’s nonsense, when it’s hot, sure seems hot to me, so when it’s cold, isn’t it just plain ol’ cold?  That day when you came runnin’ up – surprised me, you were a shock yes you were, and it was cold.

“Hey, how you doin?  My name is Lu, rhymes with, who are you,” you quit runnin’ then, and were standin’ in front of me with your hand out on the ..”are you?”  Hard to refuse a hand from anybody, but when they are as magnificent as you, it was purely natural to shake your hand.  “Ben, my name is Ben, nothin’ fancy in it, but I guess you could say, I try to avoid hearing has in front of it.”  “Oh,” you smiled, “I get that, that’s quick, a has ben, hey that’s pretty cool.  Well are you new around here?  Don’t remember seeing you on the block?”  Normally, day like this, cool, leaves to deal with, pine needles to deal with, and not all that happy to be dealing with them, I’d a dismissed the conversation somehow and got back to doing anything else besides the talking; but there wasn’t, it wasn’t and you weren’t, so what do you say when you realize your staring and you haven’t followed the conversation right?  “Oh, the block; well so it seems, uh, you must live on the block, huh?”  “Well you’re an odd one.  Do you always think like that before you speak?”  “No, I mean, well yeah…”  We both realized it was pitifully obvious I wasn’t paying attention to anything but your incredible smile and your mesmerizing eyes, in fact my attention was so drawn to your face that I felt like a face attracting magnet had attached itself to my retinas; and pulled my ability to talk properly with it, I was back to being a teenage boy again!  “Lu,” I decided to put up a front if it was possible, “you seem so friendly and all, are you some sort of block welcoming person or something?”  “No, not at all, in fact, I don’t know if the block really even thinks of itself as a block, no, just out running and saw you here working, told myself if you were still here when I started walking I’d stop and say, Hi, so, Hi.”

That was it, it was over ten years ago, that’s a long time to remember those kinds of details, but you make that kind of impression, oh I know you don’t want to agree with that, you never do; you’re always wanting to play off as being humble and not really so dynamic as you are.  Truth time though, you are every bit that dynamic, and not only that, the impression your smiling presence made on me that day, has lasted ten years!  Now sure, I suppose if we hadn’t become more than just that one meeting, it wouldn’t be so clear in my mind, but that’s not the point and you know it.