|
Since I Fell For You
The importance of being earnest. That's what my mother used to say to me, when I was younger. There were words alongside 'the importance of being earnest,' though I never quite understood how they all hung together to make any sort of point, really. That bit about kids never listening to their parents? It's true. Or mostly true, but then we all knew that.
Damn kids.
You start out with such high hopes for them, or maybe you don't, depends, I suppose, but in the end you always wind up finding out they never listened, or if they did they remembered entirely the wrong bit or, more likely than not, and I'm saying this because I might have done it myself along the line, they insert references to strawberry ice cream all over the place in whatever it is you might have said. Something pertinent and momentous, no doubt. But no, strawberry ice cream is all they waffle on about, when you might have mentioned it once by accident when they were four to shut them up and get them to eat their chili. Or not even eat their chili, as they'd done that, but to swallow the stuff, as they'd taken to storing it in their cheeks. Now, whether or not they were being bright about it, and saving it for later, should they find themselves stranded on a desert island suddenly (whilst watching the television or taking a bath or just running around outside in piles of leaves raked together in piles (though not piles much longer), the danger of being stranded on a desert island may not have been readily apparent, but perhaps they were a gifted child, with a special sort of sixth sense for knowing that they may, indeed, need that food jammed handily in their cheeks some time in the next twenty four hours, and it would be best to keep it around, just in case) or being difficult and just jamming as much food as they possibly could in their mouth and then realising there was no earthly way they were actually going to swallow all of that at once probably in the next decade or so, which would at least save you on food bills, anyway, if it meant you had to walk around with a kid that looked significantly chubbier (and not even in a cute way, as they dribbled chili everytime they did anything involving their mouth) than they otherwise would have. And so, like the food in their cheeks, it's the strawberry ice cream reference that sticks, the reference you blithely, and in a fit of pique threw out there, in the vain hope that it might force the chili stomach-ward, possibly leaving your child up a creek without a paddle, as they say, in the event they were to get stranded on a desert island in the next twenty four hours or so without any spare food tucked away somewhere in their squirrel-like cheeks, but it always seems like a reasonable enough risk to take at the time, doesn't it?
Ah, but anyway, the story. Right.
It is extremely tough being a pair of socks. One of a pair, you understand, no one can be a pair of anything. It's just not physically possible. You can try, but you'll always come up a bit short, and it's no use fighting something that's physically impossible, ask Newton. Or anyone else, really, if you haven't Newton handy.
But you're one of a pair, slightly different than one of a kind, and you're a sock.
And being a pair, surely you know that there is a certain lack of control you have over even your own Destiny, as there is this whole other half, in this particular case, over which you have no real meaningful control.
You don't want to check too often, "You okay? How're you? Doing all right"?" because that's just annoying, and you know you woulnd't like the same, so you keep to yourself, dreading the day, dreading the potential news that comes, completely out of your control.
It's the day when you look over at your partner (as is the fashionable term these days), when you haven't for a while and, to be honest, have begun to take them a bit for granted, as you do with your loved ones, and you notice something different, perhaps they look a bit wan, a bit ill. And maybe you think nothing of it, and you go on, not wanting to seem too attentive, lest they get annoyed and tell you to piss off and leave them their space. And besides, even after all these years you still try to play it a bit coy, like you don't care that much (even if some days you feel that might actually be the case).
But then it finally dawns on you, and you see it, and how could you have missed it? Your long term partner, looking, yes, a bit wan, possibly a bit sheepish, so you don't dare get angry, and in fact it breaks your heart when you see your partner has let you down by growing a hole and you just know you're both going to be thrown out, as no one darns socks any more.
Thrown out together, still, which is nice, but you're still both going to be thrown out, damnit.
disclaimer:
Somewhere along the line Wales came into the picture, and I cannot tell you, for the life of me, where the hell it went from there.
It is all part of Life's mystery and so forth, I guess.
|
Yer Weekly Horoscopes. This one is out to all the lovelies. Go on, you.