Did You Get That Email I Never Sent?

Hi Mary, it’s me, Eddo of Posted Note. You know, your online crush? Well, I wrote you that long email and then I never sent it, or did I? I don’t know because I have a tendency to write long emails in my mind on the way home from someplace distant like Mom’s house or The Spaghetti Warehouse and I get really into the email in my head, so into it that I send it, mentally, and then later I think I actually sent it to you and then I wonder why you haven’t responded. 

The last email I never sent went something like this…

Yo Mary J. What’s crackin other than your lips? I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, mostly after I just binged out on a bag of Cheetos and balanced it out with a 2 liter of Diet Coke. Remember when we used to do that, back in college, with nothing on but our footy pajamas and those fake wigs and the feather boas and your mom’s twister beads? Those were the days. We’d stay up late talking about the future, our future, and how we would one day rule the world with nothing more than a bag of penny candy and our mad wit. You’d laugh at my jokes and I’d laugh at your orange teeth. We would name ourselves from Dr. Seuss books, I would often be Pop from “Hop on Pop” and you always wanted to be a Star Bellied Sneetch or the Cat in the Hat. We’d paint our faces up like the Phantom of the Opera or Tammy Fay Baker and then dance like Chris Cross and Madonna. We’d be jumping and vogue-ing so fast and in such amazing synchronization that we were practically of one mind. 

Then there was that time when we became too close, almost too intimate if that is possible. We had this symbiotic relationship that started to cannabalize itself like Starbucks would eventually do in the 21st Century. Was it you or me that started being selfish or was it both? I needed more of you, or did I need less? I can’t remember. I just know that we were like a flame that is brightest right before it burns out. We were like Acid Wash jeans back in the 80’s, or like Spud McKenzie or any other comparable item that was super hot and then suddenly wasn’t. Yep. That was us. But we were young and restless and stupid, but not too young. I mean, you were 42 and I was 27 and we had our whole lives ahead of us – or at least I had 50% of my life and you still had 33% left of yours, but who’s counting? The point is, what happened to us? Where did we go wrong? We had this energy, this connection from the moment we met, you remember, at the Walgreen’s checkout line. You were buying that Epilady and I had just paid for my Ritalin and we struck up a conversation about Moonstruck and Bruce Willis and then I mentioned New Kids on the Block and I did that double spin twist with a hip thrust. Then you copied my move and elaborated on it and then I continued on and we had a little dance off right there in the store but before we could pick a winner we got thrown out because you jumped up on the counter and started re-enacting a scene from Flashdance. 

So here I am now, typing up this letter, but not sending it because it’s too late. You’ve moved on to your life of fame and singing and I’ve become an internationally known blogger and extremely eligible bachelor. It’s not the roles we dreamed of while in our Cheetos and Caffeine induced High, but it’s a life. It’s a living. We’ve made our beds, finally, lord knows we never did back then, but now we have to lie in them.

But remember Mary, when you are lying on your pillow at night and you feel like I am extremely close and that I could possibly be watching you, well, you feel that way because I am…. just kidding. oh, I wish I could see your chubby orange Cheeto crusted cheeks right now I would just die. No, I’m not watching you, I’m not writing you, I barely even think about you any more when I doodle your name in small script in notebooks and in the margins of books that I read or when I hear songs with your name in them, or when I am wearing my footed pajamas clutching a bag of Cheetos in the fetal position calling out your name.

 No, I’m not thinking of you at all. 

Life doesn’t always turn out the way we expect it to Mary, but we’ll always have twister beads and Diet Coke and footed pajamas and excessive amounts of blue eye shadow and duets in the park at the top of our lungs and that is more than most people will ever have in a lifetime.