Abandoned. The empty sky confirmed my suspicions. I was abandoned. She left me on the boardwalk that afternoon in front of the cotton candy stand. It was brilliantly cruel touch; she knew I loved cotton candy. I was justifiably convinced she set out to ruin all that was good in my life. As I picked away at a 3.50 bag, every passing morsel tasted increasingly bitter, driving me to a hitherto unthinkable act: tossing a half eaten bag of cotton candy away. My insatiable wanderlust lead me up and down the boardwalk. The bittersweet sight of teenaged lovers was commonplace. At every foodstand or carnival game or on every bench, boys and girls were clumsily plunging into unchartered waters, their youthful idealism and boundless optimism yet to be torn apart.
After several purely observatory trips up and down the boardwalk and as the setting sun neared its routine oblivion, I stopped at the old skee-ball stand. It all began there. Our first date was at first an awkward affair. For starters, it took me a long while to muster the requisite courage to ask her out. She replied with a sigh of relief accompanied with an insouciant cliche, "what took you so long?" We had a bite at the burger stand and walked silently down the boardwalk. It was all rather disjointed until skee-ball.
Some believe in God. Others believe in Elvis or Steve McQueen. And others believe in nothing. I believe in skee-ball. There's nothing quite like the hopeful sound of a fresh set of skee-balls - an elative wooden clink-clink. These serene spheres whirl up a worn slope, inspiring meditations on cosmic and ephemeral interstices.
