Stupid Moves

Before I dropped the bowl, I knew I was going to drop it.  I only had it by the edge of its rim and I was using my fingers like they were toothpicks, which are always ready to snap.  You're going to drop this, said my head, and my hands said, we got it-we got it, but they didn't and I knew it and my soapy water spilled into a big O on the family room floor. I painted my fingernails tonight for the first time in years, really, years, and it's on account of my grade school friend getting married tomorrow.  When the girl who you still picture in an oversized puff-painted Christmas Sweatshirt-turned-Dress with lurid red tights jutting out underneath into shiny black Mary Janes, is saying "I do" to a real live man for the rest of her life, that's when it hits you that as young as you feel, the marks you're making aren't in pencil anymore, they're in Sharpie.

Now replace all the you's above with I's and what you have is me trying to avoid what I'm really saying which is I can't believe it's time for people I still picture as kids to marry each other and live in the same bedroom and floss in tandem every day forever and then spawn miniature versions of themselves from swollen bellies.  As much as I want both for myself, marriage and pregnancy in others has always seemed a little weird to me.

Same thing with painted fingernails and toenails.  But here I am tonight, with a chipped bowl and lacquered sheaths of dead skin on my little digits and a mess I'd rather not clean up until morning.  I'm not in the mood to remedy my spill because of the Taco Night Gone Wrong we just had.  T asked the other T if he was mad at her and he said "NO" without removing his eyes from the dishes in his fast hands and slow water which meant "YES," so I left.  I finished my beer and I walked out the front door with my taco tummy because I didn't want to watch that slippery bowl fall, too.

Here I am deciding what to wear in front of all these people from what seems like another life, and I find myself still caring, still doing things I wouldn't do if I weren't going.  I should have regripped that bowl.  I should have made myself another taco.  But my sheets are clean and my nails, in the mountain sun tomorrow, will look pretty rather than chloriney, and I keep trying to remember, weddings are only about one thing, and that's not me.