Somethings from the past

Here's something I never really write about. Tonight I'm feeling . . . not nostalgic, but that is the closest word I can get.

In 1989 a friend of mine died in a car accident. It was December, and as story books would have it it was a cold, snowy, and icy night. Steve died that day, and I will never deny the fact that not only did I take that hard but damned hard. This year makes twenty years, and I can't say that he's haunted my mind everyday for two decades. Though, I most certainly have thought about him through the years.

Odd things about it . . . when girls turn into women and realize they are in their 30s the conversation almost always turns toward that first love, and the first love is almost always of the middle school variety. We giggle about doodles in notebooks, phone calls, first kisses, and that first gift. I got my first gift from Steve, which about two people know that fact, and sadly he died the next day. I didn't find it in my locker until a month later. Yea, Steve died right before the holiday, and it was left in a set of lockers that we rarely used. When I found it I remember thinking that it was like a voice from the grave. Sometimes, I do still think that. It was nothing more than a small teddy bear with a Santa's hat, about the size of my hand in total, but it certainly makes for a great first gift.

I still have that thing, packed away in my Christmas stuff, sometimes I pull it out, and I rarely make mention of where it is from. Usually, I tell people it was an unsigned gift in the seventh grade--true--but I don't tell anyone that the handwriting on the tag was clear as day Steve's. I don't tell them that I sat that January night in my room looking at that stuffed bear with tears falling. I don't tell them that sometimes, sometimes, my memories creep up on me and take me back twenty years to adolescent angst, acne, and big 80s hair to see Steve running up to me yelling "Hey, Hey . . . I've got a joke for you."