A Game Called the Future

I finished reading your novella today. Finally. I read it in two sections. For the first half I was in a park in Omaha on Memorial Day. I sat on a bedsheet I found in my backseat and put on sunglasses that had broken but were tied together with a twist tie. The backs of my knees sweat as I read and I could feel the bark of the tree I leaned against through my t-shirt as it pressed into my back. As I read your words, I started to forget about the sweat dripping down my calves and the imprints the bark was leaving on my skin. I read your words and I could hear you writing them. I thought "It sounds like you." A boy once told me that about the music I listen to. "It's meant as a compliment," he said. I mean it as a compliment, too.

I read the second part of your story the other morning at Panera. I should have went to a coffee shop on Mass St., but the familiarity of hazelnut coffee brought me there instead. There were too many people around and some sort of manager was meeting with some sort of rep from some sort of corporate headquarters. She was distracting at first, talking to the manager about the correct tape to keep behind the counter and how to motivate workers, but as I read your words, her loud voice became subdued and soon I couldn't hear anything else around me, except your voice, and then Darla's, and Max's.

When I began reading a few weeks ago, my plan was to annotate your story, giving constructive and literary feedback. I would identify places that had urgency, cohesiveness, and irony. I would suggest using allusions from mythology and references from Western philosophy. Ok maybe not. But I did hope to give you feedback that was contributing and helpful. Instead, I doodled. I doodled and I wrote words like "yikes" and "yes." I wrote comments like "Hey, this reminds me of that Tom Petty song." "This reminds me of how we met." "This reminds me of how he is." My comments weren't constructive, they were conversational. I was so engrossed in the story of Darla and Max's relationship that I couldn't be critical. I couldn't think critically about characters that reminded me of people we know and places we've been.

So today when you come home from work, I'll hand you your manuscript with my notes. There are underlines, double underlines, brackets, smiley faces, exclamation points, and words like "ugh," "love," and "funny." I love your story but have nothing insightful to say about it. I just love it the ezzact way it is written. :)