Sam sat on the ledge of building 400 on his college campus. He had kept a key after being a physics TA during his junior year and made his way to the roof when he needed mental space. Sam felt like he was on top of a great pinnacle. An old fashioned modern marvel of plate tectonics, steel beams and brick thrust up from the center of something much larger and much older than he could ever dream of being in any one of his many lives to come. The rough edge of the red brick corner cut into his leg as he leaned back and gazed up, over campus, and at the bright stars and blacked-out moon.
The exposed night was what the little town on a ledge had to offer. And it seemed that the harder he tried to look further into space at the stars, the more he was overcome with memories of the past four years. His first physics class in an auditorium below. Mooning that same class, somewhat inadvertently, as his demonstration of centrifugal force went horribly wrong. Playing poker all night and the incredibly solid feeling of a futon mattress at 9am. The laundromat and gravy omelets.
For awhile, he tried to think of a memory for each star he could see. He sat there on the edge and carefully wrote them down in a notebook. He dragged the blue ink of the ballpoint pen across the smooth white paper – between the light blue lines – and he thought that so much of life had to do with staying close to the lines. That he could wander a little. And he did by writing a page of memories on the lines.
He had done so much, and had so many dreams to come, that there was no way it would all fit between, on or around the lines in the rectangle on his lap. He stopped remembering for a moment. He looked down past his flip-flopped feet at the silhouette of a graduate still wearing her cap and gown. She was laughing into her cellphone and waving her arms sporadically. It was a welcome disruption.
This is a 20 minute story, which means I wrote it in roughly 20 minutes. I’ve done this before, and you can read those entries here. This entry was written from 10:13 pm to 10:45 pm on Wednesday, January 10, 2012 in my home office in Traverse City, Michigan. It was inspired by a the sticker on a Cutie clementine that I ate this morning. The sticker read, “Win a college education” and I thought it would be interesting to write a story about a young man that went to college thanks to citrus. However, as is often the case when I start writing, where I think I will end is not where I actually do end. Thank you for reading.
