Chrisonomicon

Monday, April 24, 2000

When I was 16, my first boyfriend and I went on a snowboarding trip together. We had been together for about six months and I didn't know it at the time, but I was madly in love with him. It's only now that I realize this. Anyway, he had this great idea to take along walkie-talkies with us on the slopes in case we got separated on the runs. We drove separate cars to Vail and, after the weekend was over, I drove back to my home and he drove back to Boulder. I looked down at the floor of my car as I was pulling into my driveway and noticed that I had accidentally kept one of the radios. I figure I would give it back to him the next weekend. That weekend passed, along with a few months, and that radio stayed on the floor of my car — my car hardly ever getting cleaned, you see. Soon, spring approached, he graduated and moved to California, and I stayed behind as I still had two more years of high school left. We lost touch, as he moved from place to place. We haven't talked since. Somehow, I've managed to hold onto that walkie-talkie. It sits in my nightstand next to my bed, and I keep it on. Every few weeks or so, I change the batteries, wondering if someday, I might get a random transmission from its orphaned twin. I've moved on and don't keep it on as a way to hold onto him, but in a romantic sense, I feel as though it's keeping part of me alive that I don't want to lose.