Lyndon
I was four when I first encountered Lyndon's freckles. They were spectacular - unlike any freckles I had ever seen - light brown and perfectly round, all the same size, distributed across his nose and cheeks like they had just fallen from the sky and stuck there.
He and his parents were American, but they had been living in Brazil when he was born. They must have moved back to the United States shortly before I met him, because at the time he was still full of images: trees the size of dinosaurs; geckos on the walls. I was captivated.
I remember writing my secret in a small notebook that I found in the kitchen. I drew an unrecognizable picture of him, a face with freckles and shiny, shiny black hair. I wrote next to this picture: "I love Lyndon because I go over his house and we play Polly Pockets." It looked something like this:
"I lofE lyndon bECos i go oR hs OsE ENd wE pliy PalE PaKIs"
My kindergarten penmanship was unequal to this task, and my confession spilled across three pages, a haphazard mixture of capital and lowercase letters. I misspelled everything except for "I" and "Lyndon." I capitalized every E and crossed it with several extra horizontal lines, to show that I was not lazy.
Without irony or self-consciousness, I loved Lyndon because I went to his house and we played with Polly Pockets. He owned the coolest Polly Pockets, ones with real moving parts that would light up and spin, and small plastic animals that small plastic Polly and her small plastic friends could lead to small plastic pools of water. His older brother would play basketball with his friends, and Lyndon and I would spend hours and hours on our knees in his room losing Polly in his rug and trying to find her again.
My mother swears that once, when he was visiting my next-door neighbor, he ran over to my driveway, dropped a piece of paper next to me and whispered, "I love you, Samantha!" I have no recollection of this. I was facing the other direction. (I have no idea what I was doing, but the evidence seems to imply that my brain was not engaged with matters on this planet.) My mother says she watched the paper blow away without me having noticed its existence.
But, oh, if I had. I lived for those moments in the cafeteria, watching Lyndon eat kiwis and feeling him touch my face when he pretended to look for each letter of the alphabet on my pink glasses. We were in the same class every year except one, from kindergarten all the way to seventh grade, when we switched to the middle-school system. He is, for me, in every elementary school craft project and in every field trip.
For years - even once we reached eighth grade and our "romance" had long since faded into amiability and platonic affection - he was the only person I knew who only called me "Samantha." I always smiled when he said my name, recognizing in myself the five-year-old I had once been. I haven't been that girl since the day he left our high school.
He and his parents were American, but they had been living in Brazil when he was born. They must have moved back to the United States shortly before I met him, because at the time he was still full of images: trees the size of dinosaurs; geckos on the walls. I was captivated.
I remember writing my secret in a small notebook that I found in the kitchen. I drew an unrecognizable picture of him, a face with freckles and shiny, shiny black hair. I wrote next to this picture: "I love Lyndon because I go over his house and we play Polly Pockets." It looked something like this:
"I lofE lyndon bECos i go oR hs OsE ENd wE pliy PalE PaKIs"
My kindergarten penmanship was unequal to this task, and my confession spilled across three pages, a haphazard mixture of capital and lowercase letters. I misspelled everything except for "I" and "Lyndon." I capitalized every E and crossed it with several extra horizontal lines, to show that I was not lazy.
Without irony or self-consciousness, I loved Lyndon because I went to his house and we played with Polly Pockets. He owned the coolest Polly Pockets, ones with real moving parts that would light up and spin, and small plastic animals that small plastic Polly and her small plastic friends could lead to small plastic pools of water. His older brother would play basketball with his friends, and Lyndon and I would spend hours and hours on our knees in his room losing Polly in his rug and trying to find her again.
My mother swears that once, when he was visiting my next-door neighbor, he ran over to my driveway, dropped a piece of paper next to me and whispered, "I love you, Samantha!" I have no recollection of this. I was facing the other direction. (I have no idea what I was doing, but the evidence seems to imply that my brain was not engaged with matters on this planet.) My mother says she watched the paper blow away without me having noticed its existence.
But, oh, if I had. I lived for those moments in the cafeteria, watching Lyndon eat kiwis and feeling him touch my face when he pretended to look for each letter of the alphabet on my pink glasses. We were in the same class every year except one, from kindergarten all the way to seventh grade, when we switched to the middle-school system. He is, for me, in every elementary school craft project and in every field trip.
For years - even once we reached eighth grade and our "romance" had long since faded into amiability and platonic affection - he was the only person I knew who only called me "Samantha." I always smiled when he said my name, recognizing in myself the five-year-old I had once been. I haven't been that girl since the day he left our high school.