When I was 16, part 2
Wensday, August 29, 2001 - 11:24

My job at the fast food restaurant was two and a half blocks from my house, so I walked there. One of the houses I had to walk by was a big old deserted run-down house. It always kind of scared me because I thought it was probably haunted, but it also made me sad. Who used to live there? Why did they leave? What had happened there?

Earlier that year I had signed up for some penpals. One day a letter came for me from this guy in Egypt. At the end of the letter, he wrote, "Write to me. Don't be retard." At first I was kind of offended. Why did he tell me to not be a retard? But then I figured out that he meant slow. Don't be slow in writing back. So I wrote him back, but he never wrote back to me.

A nother guy wrote to me from Indonesia. He had the most perfect handwriting I've ever seen. He wanted to know if I learned Indonesian in school. I wrote him back and told him that my school only had French, German, and Spanish. He never wrote back.

Then there was Audrey. Or Audery, or Agatha, or Agata. She kept changing her name. She was from Poland, and we actually corresponded for a while. Then she moved to Krakow and we lost touch.

I read a lot that summer, books about people living in different places during different times. The world was getting bigger for me. I wanted to go to Australia and New Zealand. I wanted to go to Africa. I wanted to join the Peace Corps. I wanted a cottage in the English countryside.

I went to the beach one day and talked to some of the boys in my class. They were going to be starting on the varsity football team. We were all growing up.

That August it snowed.