There was a lot of squealing
You know what three flights of stairs, twice daily, will do? I will tell you. It will draw you a colourful illustrated map of your body, and how your ~fitness~ is an illusion, a comforting lie you once told yourself, a throwback to a previous decade when your knees didn't crack at a startling volume, and when you and lactic acid were distant penpals. These days, after I ascend my four floor walk-up to my front door, I arrive short of breath, grinning with a soul-deep knowledge that if the zombie apocalypse kicked off right now, I would surely die. I'm talking first wave. Like, I would not even make it onto Season 1, Episode 1 of Zombietown 11211, a successful cable show set in such circumstances.
Did I tell you I once ran a marathon? Well, I did. I was 15. I went to class the next day like it was nothing.
I am no longer 15.
I went to see Everything, Everything at the cinema on Friday night. It's just so lovely. I read the book (by Nicola Yoon) not long after it was published, and became an instant, committed fan. Our post-work screening was packed with teenage girls (and a few boys, to be fair) and as we settled into our seats, I said to N, who had arrived slightly earlier to buy our tickets, Oh, God. Teenagers are strange and magnificent. They are also A Lot, especially over the course of a movie adaptation of a YA novel.
There was too much squealing. Their laughs were too loud, and their sighs utterly grating. But man, those teens were feeling this movie. There are a couple of scenes, in particular, that exercised our young moviegoing audience so much that we could not hear the dialogue in the film for a few seconds after. I alternated between whispering, I hate teenagers and omigod, I love teenagers. Can you remember being 15? Or 14? Do you remember the excitement of witnessing an onscreen kiss? Of seeing an age-appropriate heroine being the object of age-appropriate sexual desire? Do you remember wanting something so bad, and then when it happened, being delighted and yet also embarrassed by your giddiness, which only served to make you even more giddy, somehow? I was forcefully taken back to that time in my life. I do not miss it, because it requires so much energy to be this permanently on the edge of hype, to be so open to the idea of uncomplicated romance that you expel your breath so harshly it makes a noise. I was irritated by their noisy existence in the cinema that night. But I was also fortified by it. Imagine gasping with pleasure at somebody else's pleasure. That's pure and human and just... lovely. Ugh, my heart.
I have plants now. I have a succulent and a peace lily and a coffee plant and while we are only a few days in, I am feeling peppy and confident they will not die. Not on my watch. Please. I need this win, Universe. Do me this solid.
Ta very much.