Tap Water

When I was about 11 years old my friends and i used to play Pokemon on the playground. Not the games, not the cards or anything. Just playing pretend. I remember one kid always cheated, he would pretend to “evolve” way early as we ran around.

When I was 17 I stole that kids girlfriend. That didn’t feel too good.

And when I was 18, he stole her back. That felt a whole lot worse.

So i guess Pokemon isn’t the important part of that story. The really interesting thing happened later. But, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I like the first part of that story a lot more. Maybe not everything has to be so interesting.

I took a girl out to eat when I was in college. Just to a small, shitty little hole in the wall bar, because I didn’t know where to go. I had moved hundreds and hundreds of miles away from my home, from my family, from the girl that I loved that cheated on me.

While we were eating, I tried to fill the air with some small talk, anything to fill that gap. So I talked about tap water. How, no matter where I went here, the water didn’t taste the same as back home. Obviously, she didn’t exactly fall in love. Tap water, as a conversation topic, isn’t really interesting. Even though it made me think of home, made me miss it, made me regret ever speaking to that girl, made me miss her, made me wish that I was home and she was back in my arms, and nothing had ever happened, it was still just tap water. It wasn’t very interesting.

But maybe not everything has to be.