Who needs pride, anyway?

"Summers here are like The Sandlot," she said. I never saw the film in question, but nevertheless a perfect imagery formed itself in my mind's eye as I watched her socked foot tap against the leg of the black metal folding chair. It was an admission, on her part, that things used to be different. There was a hint of regret in the way she chose her words, but we both understood the futility of the past.

"You remind me of that song, Martha My Dear," she remarked the next evening as we nervously eyed the birds soaring amidst the rafters above us. Our cart was filled with reminders of the mundane side of life. Somehow her comment had seemed backwards, like the child pretending to be the grown up who didn't yet understand adulthood. The cart squeaked innocently around the corner ahead of us.

"Do you have a tent?" he asked the following afternoon. "We can take it to Thousand Hills in May." The question caught me unawares as I sat on his Mexican blanket, staring absent mindedly out the open window on the opposing wall. The heavy wooden frame was propped open with a wooden stake, and my hand barely brushed the open page of the book that was settled on my lap. The sun bouncing off the roof and through the window made me tired, and I knew that although the situation was a perfect replication of an overexposed photograph of nothing, it would never mean the same thing.

"You're too complacent," I told myself as I lay in bed, staring through the kitchen at the rice cooker balanced precariously on a stack of multicolored milk crates in the living room. I was never devious enough to be heroic, and now my nondescript past was misrepresenting me as something bad when I was completely innocent. It didn't bother me too much, though, because enough things remained the same to counterbalance any negative impressions. So I merely rolled over and buried my head in the giant brown pillow, inviting sleep to quiet the thoughts in my head.