You did notice the part of the title that says "Absence," right?

Maybe six of the best paragraphs i've ever written, the beginning of a short little fairy tale i'd like to finish someday...

It was a dark and stormy night, except that it wasn't. In fact, it was not stormy and hardly dark at all, a fact which made it exceptionally difficult to be night, unless the place of our story were nearest the north pole during summerstime. It's not. It is, actually, noplace more simple than Kansas, or less simple for that matter, being Kansas itself. Though this hardly may seem the location for such an extraordinary tale, it may be that we place too much emphasis on the extra and not quite enough on the ordinary. As any good storyteller will explain, the value of a story lays in the revelation that something believed to be quite ordinary was alltogether all along quite extraordinary.

This is why the story could hardly be about me, for i am extraordinary, at least partially so. Retired. This story, as most all stories are, is about a boy and a girl. A (not-so) ordinary boy and a simply extraordinary girl who was simply all wrong in life.

Perhaps it was a switching at birth (these things happen quite often in fairy tales, you know) or maybe her mother ate a bad fruit and suffered a mild indigestion on the wrong morning, but for whatever reason, the girl, whom we shall affectionately know as Mellie (who's actual name was Melody but her friends being simple on account of them being children felt that was too many syllables to pronounce), was born and grew up not quite in step with everything else. Either one-half step ahead, or one-part step behind, it was a clumsy method of growing up for an already awkward girl.

But as is the case with so many awkward young girls, Mellie (who believed it was only a matter of time before her friends grew weary of saying as many as two syllables in her name) grew up into a decidedly less awkward young lady, and at age 16 proved to be rather extraordinary. This was quite apparent to all of the men and boys who spoke with her and noticed their IQ's dropping, their stutters increasing, and their eyes shifting much less subtlety than they believed between their shoes and places they should not be glancing.

Also, like so many awkward young boys, our hero—who was called Jay by his friends (of which he had a very few), his enemies (which consisted entirely of a small group of bullies who rather liked pushing Jay into puddles of mud), and those who rather rarely thought much of him anyway (truth be told, a category which most people, up to and including his parents, teachers, and most unfortunately nearly every girl ever)—grew up into a decidedly more awkward young man, and proved at the age of 16 that it was possible to be more awkward than Jay had been at age 10—something to which there had been a great debate concerning feasibility, probability, likelihoodability, and a great deal of other words which may or may not have ended in “-ility.” It is very difficult, you must understand, to form one's own identity when your name contains no more than one simple letter, and not a very popular or exciting letter at that.

At an age when girls and boys think less about kissing and more about mud pies, it became entirely commonplace for an already awkward girl to spend her afternoons running and playing with an equally awkward young boy. And so it was that Mellie seemed strangely immune to Jay's awkward growing up, having been privy to it all along. He was, in so far as she was concerned, a tag-a-long little brother or a harmless puppy. This was not the case with Jay, who was increasingly aware that his own awkwardness grew exponentially according to his proximity with the decidedly less awkward Mellie, and struggled valiantly and hopelessly to keep his eyes from shifting away from his feet to places they probably should not be glancing.

Music of the Day

• Eisley, The Valley (it may or may not be true that I once asked one of the Eisley girls to marry me. I think she ignored me, which was probably one of the smarter things she's done in her life)
  

Reading Assignment of the Moment

• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (I don't know why I thought of this comparison--actually, I do, and if you ask, I'll tell you--but Tarzan would kick Batman's ass any day of the week, and then he'd ask for seconds)
  

A (Brief) Review of Four Books I Read in the Last Month

• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand: I read it. It was a book, about a man, a man who did things, true things.
• Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller: It was a book, about a man, by a man, a man who did things, things he said he did, things he probably made up.
• In The Garden of Beasts by Eric Larsen: There were Nazis (I hate Nazis) in this book. There really wasn't a plot. It was a biography, or a history, or a history of a biography. There were politics, spies, a little violence, a bit of sex, one Chevrolet, and an auspicious amount of Nazis. Also, true.
• The Drowning Pool by Ross MacDonald: Also, a book. No Nazis, but there were gangsters. Also, violence, sex, and a couple of segues that combined scenes that made me think it was originally 3 completely different stories amalgamated into one. Not as good as The Moving Target, also by MacDonald, which was good. Untrue, from start to finish. Unlikely to read more MacDonald for a little while.

Are you still reading? Shush. Go away, and do something valuable with your time! I'll let you know when I'm back.