Woodland folk

I'm always forgetting things, trifling things, things that are hardly worth remembering anyways--like phone numbers and names and homework assignments. I forget my keys a lot, my wallet and ID even more. It's kind of a problem, but trying to coach my memory would be a waste of time I feel. Absentmindedness becomes me in a way. It leads me to strange adventures and stranger acquaintances. Forgetfulness is useful in that sense. It takes you out of the realm of calm and cool reason, making sure my days are never straightforward, never truly boring.

Ironically enough, I have fond memories of forgetting things. There was the time I forgot to turn in my permission slip for a field trip to some hokey corn maze in the fifth grade. My teacher had handed it out with the succinct instructions that we bring it back in exactly a week, anointed with the signature of a parent and/or guardian. A week flew by as they tend to do in the microscopic world of prepubescent boys, and the permission slip crumpled into a progressively smaller lump at the bottom of my backpack, dismissed from my mind the moment Mrs. Radar stopped talking about it and moved on to critiquing our cursive writing or reprimanding poor Brenton for being a brat (which he most thoroughly was). And when the time came to turn it in, I was left to shuffle awkwardly from foot to foot before Mrs. Radar's desk, mumbling false excuses about how my mother was away on business and dad hardly knew English (This was when I came to the conclusion that when in doubt, always forge).

Needless to say, my excuses fell on deaf ears, and the following week, as the rest of my class filed merrily off to the Corn Maze, I was left alone with Mrs. Jardet, the corpulent intern, who I had always hated because she never smelled of anything besides flowers and licorice. We were studying American Geography at the time and Mrs. Radar had left me with a pile of maps to color with marker, labeling the major cities, rivers, and regions. After I was done Mrs. Jardet, who wasn't very much use to anyone, simply told me to sit and read or nap if I felt like it. I told her I had already finished my book (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). I said I wasn't tired and needed to use the bathroom.

Out I went, into the cavernous hallways of the elementary school, which seemed so small to me years later when I returned, now a high school senior, to pick up my sister. I skipped straight by the bathroom and out the glassy double doors to the bus circle where kindergartners in pastel puffer coats lined up in the autumnal chill, awaiting simpering mom's who wore velour track suits and drove souped up minivans. Alone, and intense with the thrill of my illicit outing, I cavorted to the play ground, dashing by the rusting swing set and the tubular, colorful slides that spiraled downwards with their metal studs that shocked your hand as you slid by, the static electricity flaring blue in the semidarkness. Bored with the playground, I ventured farther away from the school building, which sat dourly watching me--a parent observing its prodigal son. I ran past the tether ball court and the four square plot, past the dried up gulch where dirty water burbled after it rained, past the mobile flat-top classrooms where the special education kids had class in the morning and where my after school art program met every Tuesday and Thursday, until finally I came to the edge of the woods behind my school. Today I know that those woods aren't really woods. It's really just a lone stand of trees dividing the school from Grisby Chapel Road.

But on that day in late October the woods seemed very large to my ten year old self, large but not ominous. I was at the age where childish imaginings were still possible... the real world hadn't quite seeped into my consciousness yet; I could still dream that fey, elven folk with flaxen hair and piercing eyes lived around each hillside. I could still gaze into the swift waters of the creek by the library and see ripple creatures who changed in the light: little navy fish trying to get upstream.

I ran by the edge of the woods, stopping at times to observe a bird flying overhead or an unusual patch of chitinous fuzz on a fallen log. The wind tugged insistently at my hair and when I looked up at last I saw a slowly falling bounty of leaves, dessicated and brown, drifting just out of sight, cloaked in pure white light.