Notes

I remember high school. I remember grade school. I remember passing notes. It was an art form. Some sort of unspoken membership that you were given upon achieving the football fold and the square triangle tuck. These skills were crucial to the passing of the communication from one hand to another. Notes floated through hallways and homerooms. This was before the cell phone text message and the Nintendo DS with it's messaging abilities.

I remember passing notes to people simply for the rush of getting away with it. We didn't have any teachers that would read them aloud, but the notes were almost always carefully worded with code phrases and various idiomatics that only our circle of age group would follow. We referred to people using nicknames. We spoke of events using vague but recognizable names. We felt like spys, our super-secret club always on the verge of being infiltrated by the evil teacher/parental unit type person.

So it was, as I walked into my office Thursday morning that I was reminded of all of these things. There on my desk was a note. Folded, not so painstakingly as it would have been ten years ago, in a square and tucked partially under my computer keyboard. My name was written in artistic scrawl on the front. I smiled, not quite sure who it was from, but having some idea.

I read the note, the nostalgia of the act eliciting a grin. I re-read it and re-read it again. It was simple. Informational, but flirtatious. It was casual and forward. It was perfect. I smiled at some point and had a hard time letting it fade for the rest of my rather hectic morning.

I miss the notes. The IM and the txt message have destroyed the need for these small paper communication devices, artfully shaped into the best form for safe delivery. I miss the notes. I miss the innocence that was those notes. I miss the world through my eyes when i was 15. I look at 15 year-olds now and remember that I was that way once. That annoying to my elders. That outspoken and that resistant to normal. I remember being that age. I remember my raging emotions. I remember my view of the world. I remember the parties and the trouble we got in. I remember 15 year old passions and kisses that made my heart stop. I remember my wishes to be older. I remember the music and the movies.

I remember the notes.