holding crowns.

It's the same old story, really. The classes change, but here I still sit, waiting for...something to solidify that yes, I am in fact a senior in college. I've been asked at least thirteen times in two weeks if I'm a freshman. I still wear my dopey smile at Dobs, wondering why I haven't quit by now.

I sip rum concoctions while reading Shakespeare, but all that makes me is 21. I'm still 16. I'm practically 25.

Sticky notes adorn my desk, names like Northwestern and Sarah Lawrence make me jittery and nervous and anticipating the change that's waiting to slap me in the face. It occupies my mind like a high school crush. I sit in class and drum my fingers to the beat of Bronxville and Chicago and Laramie and Pittsburgh.

It's so close I could probably reach out and touch it all, the sounds and smells and tastes of traveling, living somewhere new. But I don't. I'm still in the in-between, between starting senior classes and applying to grad schools. Between kissing goodbye four years of familiarity and skipping into the arms of all things unknown. Between knowing who I am and who I can become, I suppose.

Will I be more grown-up in a year? Will I learn to like beer? Will I learn to speak in front of more than twelve people with having a nervous breakdown? Will I sit in classrooms discussing intelligent topics like...well, probably not. Who the hell cares?

I'm more interested in crazy tangents and the impossibility of nonsensical ramblings, anyway.

All of this future-oriented stuff is a tick. One of the lime-disease carrying kinds. Right now, I'm going to learn how to be a senior. And then, then, I will dive head first into everything that awaits me next year.

12 facts.

1. My philosophy professor is already handing out homework assignments and classes don't begin until the 23rd.

2. I drive back to Erie in two days, move my stuff into the apartment in three days, and start work again in four days.

3. There is utterly too much to contemplate right now.

4. I am not looking forward to...a lot of things.

5. Somehow, I'm still managing to keep an open mind.

6. It's proven that taking on the stress of others causes zits and headaches. Or maybe I just made that up.

7. I'm feeling that familiar, desperate itch to go/run/drive far, far away.

8. I'm in the middle of writing a brand spankin' new short piece and I'm having a blast with it.

9. I need a new stress reliever. Working out is simply not cutting it.

10. Muskmelon is best eaten directly from your own personal garden.

11. Bada boom = Bada bang

12. Fear has no place in friendship.

Singer.

There's a song you once gave me. Keep it, you said. It's great, huh?

I put the song in my pocket and kept it there, listening only to the tiniest bits and pieces. I only let the whole song play through on special occasions; those times you looked away, or late at night when the wind howled through snow drifts.

I kept that song in my pocket until, bit by bit, it started to lose it's appeal. By then it was long forgotten by you. Listen to this, you told me half-heartedly. It's great, right?

Sing it to me first, I said. And then I'll listen. You shook your head no.

And then another you came by, held out a hand and sang to me a sweet tune. Here, the other you said, it's all yours.

Slowly, carefully, I took the song the first you had given me. It was crumpled, ripped, faded, forgotten. I let that song fall gently to the ground, and walked with the other you, the you who wasn't afraid to serenade.