I used to do this depressing thing where I’d walk down the block to my old elementary

school on the weekends,

and pretend something momentous or philosophical was afoot, as I sat on the brand-new

swing-set, staring at the hill

I used to sled down, and the spot where I made fake paw-prints in the snow that Melissa O.

believed were from a wolf.

 

Why couldn’t I just accept that Abbot School spooked me, case closed? Why not make

new plans with new, exciting friends

like all the other twenty-two-year-olds? Instead of walking the grounds, a lost townie,

searching for a trace of himself in his memories:

 

that time I bounced Ryan B. on the bouncy stair so hard, he bit his lip and needed

stitches (he never told on me),

the days upon weeks upon months I spent at the four-square courts on the blacktop,

hungrily battling Stephen and Joe

for King-of-the-Day. How many times have those yellow lines faded and been repainted?

Is there a particle of us left there

 

on those courts, and if not, was there any meaning to it? A purpose to hold those memories

in like old pennies in a big glass jar?

And then, outside my 5th grade classroom, on the red-brick wall, I saw the words scraped

into the brick with a rock: “all is on socks.”

 

All is on socks, like all of life is movement, is walking farther away from the past with

every second, like it or not.

All is on socks, like the point of life is to conserve all the warmth and comfort you can

while covering up your ugly feet.

All is on socks, as in all you need concern yourself with in life, is resting on your socks,

meaning You and no one else.

 

Let’s not discuss how many times I came back to this brick-wall proverb or the fact that,

upon further inspection, it really said “Allison Sucks.”

Can we just focus on the lesson learned? That life is not a scavenger hunt wherein you

search for prizes someone else has hidden for you?

 

Can we just agree that, as much as your desolate soul aches for a miracle, sometimes

Allison just sucks?