Black Tennis Shoes

At the very beginning of my last spring semester, my writing teacher sat all of us in class in circle and one at a time, asked us to pick a memory. It didn’t have to be a memory we clearly remembered, in fact, she asked that we try and chose one from farther pack in our childhoods that we maybe haven’t reworked a thousand times at family reunions or telling new friends in the dorms. The catch in the exercise was that we had to close our eyes, tell the class the memory and only talk in current tense, like the memory was happening for the first time ever right now.

Example: I picked something silly because I thought the exercise was rather ridiculous at the time. I talked about the time my grandmother mistook a potato sack for Spencer when we were both really young. And then she chased me around the house with a hair brush because my long hair was always so snarly. “I walk into the kitchen and I see Grandma talking to a bag of potatoes my dad just left by the sink from Grandpa’s garden. Grandma is sort of yelling at the potato sack, telling it to move, little boy, go find your sister.” She didn’t have her glasses on and Spencer was rather short and tubby in his early years, but still, you see what I mean? Current tense.

Classmates had emotional reactions to some of their memories, but I didn’t. Still I kept the experience in the back of my head, knowing if I ever really needed it, at least the possibility of breaking through to something was there.

Yesterday was Tuesday of homecoming week down at school. I’ll be home for the parade, football game and general debauchery on Friday, but homecoming week has always been my favorite time of year at school. There’s always a certain feeling of unity on campus that week, when most of the time, we’re all just rushing from one place to the next and trying to live to graduation or at least the next day. Tuesday of homecoming has always held a particularly special place in my heart. I met one of my best friends on a homecoming Tuesday. Well, I met him before that, but timing just kind of crashed into a screeching halt on that special Tuesday in a life changing way and no matter what’s going on, even though neither of us are in school right now, we always make sure to celebrate homecoming Tuesday. When he called last night, one of the first things he did was wish me a happy Tuesday evening. “It has been two years. Can you believe it?”

“Feels like a lot longer,” I replied, laughing. “But we made it through.”

“Ah yes,” he said. “We did.”

After an hour or so we hung up and I dug my trusty laptop out from behind a couple of boxes in my living room, plugged it in and sat in front of a white screen for a little while. I remembered my writing class exercise, settled into my pillows with the laptop propped up on my knees and spoke/typed my way through a memory.

We were dancing in a bar downtown on a Tuesday night. And it is amazing how the memory exercise really does bring back details you thought were long gone. Because I have an obsession with shoes and really believe the pair I wear on any given day will change how the day (and my life) goes, I was always sad I couldn’t remember which shoes I wore out that night, two years ago. They were my black tennis shoes with white stripes on the side. My dad always teases that they look like wrestling shoes, but I wore them that night because we were supposed to have a relaxing night at someone’s house and not end up downtown. I picked those because they’re more sleek than my running shoes. And I had a black hoodie on I never wear anymore. The floor was sticky and before we got there, Amy and I huddled in the back seat, clutching hands, praying to our school’s mascot that we’d be good kids because we had class in the morning we had to go to. Here’s something funny: my class? It was Ethics. I forgot that.

Anyway, it was a great writing exercise and not only did it bring back tidbits that I thought were long gone, it made me fall asleep, feeling a little closer to a guy I care about so much that there are no words for it. Plus, it made me write last night. For that, I am grateful.