It was there my mother ran into an old friend of hers. We had been walking in the gardens outside the theatre when she had spotted him. He was a tall man, he looked friendly I guess, but I was shy nonetheless. He had brought his own son to see Shakespeare as well. The boy was my age as well, his father said his name was Archana. He was dressed in grey dress pants with matching grey vest, a light blue shirt, and a little navy blue bow tie. I realize now it was probably his mother who had dressed him up to go see some Shakespeare, but at the time I thought it was sharp and cute. I was a little smitten, a feeling I didn't quite understand at that age, as I had never really felt that way before.
I was shy to talk to him, and he didn't seem to want to talk to me neither. But of course our parents left us alone to play while they walked away to talk about whatever it was grown ups talked about at the time. Archana seemed a little unsure what to do, but soon asked if I wanted to play hide and go seek. I said sure, and he immediately started counting.
I took off towards the theatre: the gardens were all small bushes and shrubs, nothing to really hide under. The theatre was the only building around, and other than it, the only other good hiding places were behind cars in the parking lot.
As I stepped into the theatre, the chill of the AC left me shivering slightly. I was suddenly unsure about whether I should have been in there. A lot of old men and women were walking around in funny costumes, and giving me evil looks.
I was suddenly shoved from behind. "Found you!" Before I could push him back, several of the actors ushered us back outside "Go through the front entrance with your parents."
We did as we were told.
Me and my mom managed to get seats near Archana and his dad. As soon as the lights dimmed and the actors spoke there first words, we seemed to realize in unison this was not going to be fun. The words coming from the actor's lips were all english. They all sounded kind of familiar. But the order they used them, the way they said them, their funny accents, all made it impossible to know what was going on. We turned to each other and laughed at the actors instead. Making dumb jokes and pointing out the flaws in the actors 'He's not really handcuffed! he's just holding his hands together!". We laughed a little too loud, and were sent out of the theatre, with our parents left behind.
Archana's dad had driven to the theatre, and offered us a ride back to our home. Me and him sat in the back seat. I pulled out a piece of gum, and offered him one as well. I started to blow bubbles, when I noticed his eyes were on me, wide in wonder.
"How did you do that?"
"Do what? Blow a bubble?"
"Yea! I can't do that!"
"It's easy! Just kind of smush the gum flat, then push it to your lips, and poke kind of a hole in the middle with your tongue, and then blow!"
It took several attempts, but eventually he got a feeble bubble blown and popped. He giggled uncontrollably, obviously proud of his newest skill. We spent the entire car ride back home blowing bubbles, each bigger than the other's.
I never saw him again after that day. I thought I was in love. I thought love was sharing dumb jokes whispered at theatres, and blowing bubblegum in the backseat of a car on a hot summer's day.
I grew older, a little wiser, and thought I had been childish to think that.
Nowadays I think, why isn't that all love should be?
No comments:
Post a Comment