an alternative to eating dinner this evening-

I was indulging in a spot of teenage-style melancholy tonight, and walked aimlessly around Oneonta for a few hours listening to a Duncan Sheik album on repeat.

Pretty satisfying, really.

And it got me thinking about two things - one, being my elementary school, and the other - the odd human microcosms that exist in our lives: in a small town that goes not much more than a mile in any direction, there are places I may not see for years, streets I'll seldom walk down. Seems remiss on my part, to neglect them; they're perfectly good streets.

One of those streets that I haven't been on in at least... I'd say at least three years... is Central Ave. And I walked up it tonight.

It passes the side doors to my elementary school; the ones I used to use when I was in third grade and my classroom was in the old building; the other years my classes were in the 'new' building and I used the main entrance.

There was something that drew me about those doors - I walked up to see if they were the same as in the old days; I could almost feel the cold, slightly-slimy metal of their smooth handles on my palms, and I had an urge to touch them again and find out if my memory was accurate - but the doors had been replaced and had new black handles, so I touched the old stone of the building instead, for a moment, and then turned to walk away.

Which is when I noticed that the gate to the schoolyard was open, behind the school. I'd last set foot in it during one of the final lunch recess periods of sixth grade, 26 years ago. To break that record, I walked in.

It was exactly the same; the same broken asphalt, the same black-painted metal railing dividing the upper and lower playground areas; the concrete wall had been patched but not replaced. And there was where I'd sat on the ground reading a Nancy Drew mystery; there's where I'd wandered on my own, far away from the other students, so that I could sing to myself without being teased. Over there was where Judith and I used to stand and play one-two-three-SWITCH! with the red kickball. -I could almost see the aides Mrs. Lent and Mrs. Ross standing there, watching me walk in the dusk, watching my friends and me digging excitedly in the snow under that tree, pulling out little colored plastic beads; they must have been from someone's cheap broken necklace, but to us they were magic; strange bright offerings from the winter landscape. Down there was where I scraped my knee that day, and had to go to the nurse's office; over on the side was where Mary and I would hang out in later years to get away from Mark, a pudgy kid who had a crush on me. (Boys -uggh!) And right there, right in the middle, was where we danced and shrieked and threw our hands in the air, amidst the conflicting clamor from all the local church bells, the day they released the Iranian hostages.

I walked around the schoolyard for awhile, seeing ghosts in every square inch of blacktop. And then I came home, walking past the trees where a sixth-grader named Kenny used to lie in wait and scare us by brandishing his jackknife, making our kindergarten commute fraught with fear; past the driveway where I ran into a car the same year, and mashed my ankle and had to be on crutches; all the while listening to Duncan Sheik on my iPod.

All of which leads me to conclude (as I conclude every day) - that life just doesn’t make any freakin’ sense.