Short Folk #7: Quaker Allison

Note: This is most likely going to suck. Writing it now just under my deadline. Just barely got back from the Airport and Mexico City. Believe it or not I think I had a crazier day today than Fridays flying car episode.   I went with some friends to el Socalo (don't have time to spell check) which is the HUGE square in the center of colonial Mexico City.  Well, little did we know we were walking into a political rally for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,(pictured above, remind you of anyone?). He lost the last presidential election, but has declared himself the legitimate president of Mexico and is extremely left wing. So there was this incredibly huge stage and towers and towers of giant speakers, and over 20,000 people massed in the square. The type of on-the-brink, charged rally that I don't think the US has seen since Vietnam.  Anyway, there were other crazy things to happen (I heard the Cardinal of Mexico give mass in the cathedral right next to where the rally was going on...you could hear the chants and vitriol of Obrador echo hollowly through the cathedral, very eerie.) but this isn't a journal. Its a new story (which will probably be crappy):

Quaker Allison

I was hopelessly and unrealistically in love with a Quaker girl all through high school. Allison. Mousey hair and brown rimmed glasses.  Her family was from a branch of Quakers that eschewed all technology. For me that held such mystery. They had no phone. No TV. She just sat and read a book whenever we had computer class.

Late at night, when I was in the throes of it in a way only awkward teenage boys could ever really understand, I would pick up the plastic hamburger phone by my bedside and fantasize about secret phone numbers I could dial to somehow reach her. Something that bypassed all jacks and tangles of wires and got to straight to the place where I hoped she was waiting, breathless, to hear my voice. I'd dial 9111 because I felt that one extra bit of urgency to communicate with her. Or I'd dial 9288042581, my birthday and hers together. Or 8008 because I was a teenager and the hormones and all.

Soon my fascination with Allison moved beyond the hamburger phone. I'd fantasize reaching her heart with entirely new forms of human communication: Driving down her street and revving my car in Morse code. Intricate paper airplanes that could fly the miles between our houses, using their braille messages for aerodynamics (she wasn't blind, but still). Even a huge tower that I would build to the moon so I could cast shadow puppet charades of my love down on her hair as she sat by her window.  And others, some of the most imaginative ideas of my life.

But, with a shame maybe only awkward teenage boys can ever truly understand, I never did anything, never said more than 10 words to Allison. I got a cellphone and moved on to girls I could call with it. 

I'm writing this now because I just saw her on Facebook. Allison. That Allison. I'm sure of it. I didn't friend her. I never will. I feel like crying. I feel like revving out the end of the best, most childlike, part of myself in old Camaro Morse code. I feel old. I feel like building that tower to the moon and asking, in delicate shadow puppetry, if there are any more Quakers left in the world.

End, (thankfully, better tomorrow)