existence just kind of keeps going...

I'd like to discuss the difference between the idea of someone and the person that inhabits the idea but my brain has ceased to function, so here's a thing a wrote. I wrote it a long time ago. Like middle-of-January long time ago. For lit class. I'm sorry. But does anyone know how many oreos I would have to consume before my sweat starts smelling like oreos? Because that would be cool. Another thing. Blankets should get warmer or cooler depending on your current temperature and your desired temperature. Then you'd never get to hot at like 2am and then be forced to choose between opening the window and allowing in the negative five billion degrees outside air or taking your blankets off and allowing yourself to become a target for the boogie man that obviously takes up residence under every bed. Final thing, I promise. Why do your eyelids get heavy? Honestly. It's really distracting and it requires so much more energy just to keep your eyes open and I just want to get things done. Gosh. No more of this slowly fading out of consciousness. Awake. Asleep. The line needs to be more clear. There should also be more of the sleeping and less of the awaking. Do you understand? No more homework. No more races. Only sleeping until my eyelids are no longer moderately heavy. Also books. I don't really want to read right now. Can I hire someone to read to me? That would be good. When I was a kid, my mom read the first three Harry Potter books to me. It was a constant struggle to get her to read to me because I always wanted one more chapter and my mother wanted one more hour of sleep. I currently want both things. So. Here's the thing that I wrote middle-of-January long time ago for lit class. 

***

I was sitting with Nate and Toby in Toby’s office and the banter was light and expansive. It was good and fun to sit quietly and listen to stories and jokes, feeling like I was contributing just enough. Perhaps too much. But at one point Toby told a story, apparently one that was too similar to the one told before it, and at the punch line, the response from his audience was lacking. Toby apologized a bit too profusely, putting on a show of remorse, complete with a frown and puppy-dog eyes. The only way to combat this overabundance of faux-shame, is to tease him further. “You let the conversation down,” I said, putting on a show of admonishing him. And then I realized what I had been thinking months ago: The conversation is alive. It is its own entity, forming around the words and sentiments of those within the exchange.
Some comments keep the flow of conversation going, some stop them dead, and some, while not adding to the conversation, do not necessarily kill it. To the latter of these comments, Toby’s response is always “Nice!” or some other comment that makes you feel like you are not a conversation murderer.
“Not all silences are uncomfortable,” he said between bites of sandwich. I looked at him quizzically. I knew this. Most of my life is a comfortable silence. The difference between moments when a conversation suddenly dies of heart failure and when it gently glides into non-existence is how the audience responds to the last few comments of the conversation. It depends upon the relationship between the conversation-goers. So when Toby was driving a van on a slippery, curvy road in the middle of Colorado, and I said something that didn’t add to the life-force of the conversation, his response was “Nice!” with an appreciative head nod. Then a silence settled around us like snow falling gently in December: that light fluffy snow that blows through the air like a shared smile: transient and quiet. The kind of snow that when you wake up in the morning it has settled and nestled into every crack of your window. You run outside simply to grab an armful of snow and throw it into the air, because watching it fall is the best part. Sometimes conversation is quiet like gracefully falling snow. But that sort of snow never stops dead; it fades out. Eventually it stops without you even realizing it. When the sky runs out of snowflakes, you’re grateful for the sunshine and the mounds of newly fallen snow on the ground.

Had one of these moments today...

Okay. But why did he rip his shirt off?