It turned out to be a pretty great school reunion after all. In the weeks before, I stubbornly eff why eyed the two friends of high school I was still in contact with that I was not attending and that was all she wrote. But in the end I did get itchy feet, put on my Sunday best and sauntered over to the old schoolyard. And just seeing all those faces again was such a delight! A trip down memory lane, forsooth! To be honest, I never had the best friendships in those days, but time can do so much for your feelings toward people. I was long-time-no-seeing with the best of them, throwing triple exes and ohs around, and generally being more sociable than ever, and I was not the only one. Everyone was all colon dee and no apologies. There were ell oh ells all around and the bracketed b’s flowed like never before. Of course, old grudges are the worst when they finally bubble up and rear their ugly head. When that head is fueled by alcohol, something has to go down at some point. Two men were starting to cause a bit of a fracas when they started discussing their crushes and remembered how they used to always be fighting for the same girl. That girl was Lucy, and she had been the it-girl of our year. Now, they were both claiming they still less-than-threed her and each strongly suggested the other to back off. Of course, Lucy, as girls at that age – or any age for that matter - tend to do, only had eyes for the older boys and ay aff kayed all of us. I had an itsy bitsy crush on her too at some point but never fancied myself in with a shot so I never pursued it and had forgotten about her long ago. To my great surprise, then, she came up to me hoping I could resolve the problem at hand and eff-one her out. After I separated the two brawlers in a particularly gentlemanly manner – I basically told them to turn off their caps lock -, Lucy ohed me as a tee why and then inquired after my skype-name. I was a bit colon ohed by this, and half-expected this to be one of those sick pranks that the beautiful ones tend to play on the not-so-beautiful by pretending to less-than-three them and then control-alt-delete the venture at the very end - to a ringing roar of ell oh ells. By the time I went through this ritual in my head my face had shifted to a colon ess, but I finally decided we were not in puberty anymore, that all was gonna be a-okay, and copy-ceed my skype nickname for her. She seemed sincere about the whole thing so I was kind of on a high from this point on. Everything got a bit low contrast and dimmed brightness towards the end of the night and after I sat staring at the woebegone tennis courts next to the gym hall for a while, I decided to cut my losses and slash-quit the party.
When I got back home my computer was flashing at me and roping me in, and I got on just in time to catch Lucy online. She said she was just signing off, and right when I was about to bid her N-eight I woke up. In a haze I walked into the bathroom for an eff-fiving shower, where I contemplated my dream. When my initial annoyance at signing back into my real life had passed, I wondered what it meant. There was something about Lucy – or the idea of Lucy - that must have been essential to me and my whole adult life, but I couldn’t figure it out there and then. When I got out of the bathroom all soaped and brand new I was shocked to find there was a girl sleeping in my bed. It was Lucy - beautiful, desirable Lucy. And then it hit me: my wife, that’s what she was! Dreams can be deceitful.
