Imagine with me that scene at the end of one of those coming of age movies. We've all seen them, most of them were probably crap, but we saw them anyway. In this movie, we've been following this boy through some harsh troubles in school and the destruction of his relationship with the girl he thought he would marry. Finally, after fighting, graduation, and getting shot down one last time, we have this scene.
It's late at night, or early morning. Either way, it's dark and hazy. He's on the street, leaning against a beat-up old car that his uncle gave him for graduation high school. In front of him is a house, her house. The girl he'd been holding on to. All the lights are dark but he knows she's home.
Standing there, he smokes a cigarette. The music has that somber tone and the flash backs start, in black and white.
The two of them, sitting together in first grade sharing crayons. They smile at each other and laugh like kids do.
He flicks some ash and a few sparks drop, dying before the pavement. He breathes out the smoke.
There's the two of them in eighth grade. Some other kid in class says something to her. She cries and he slugs the other kid. Of course he gets sent to the office and his parents come to take him home. But just before he leaves, she hugs him tightly and says, "thank you."
He crushes the cigarette under his foot, next to the other one and starts to light a third.
The two of them are on her front porch. His mom is in the car by the street. Both of them have a hard time looking each other in the eye and stutter through some words. He doesn't know what to do. The honking horn tells him he needs to leave. As he turns, she pecks his cheek and darts into the house. He smiles, even though he can see his mom chuckling in the driver's seat.
He turns his collar up as the wind shifts. The smoke blows toward the house, disappearing in the dark.
Then a flood of happy memories: the two of them on his front porch swing in the sun, sledding down the town snow hill and laughing, him by her bed side trying to measure out the cold medicine and her having to take it before he spilled. The two of them dancing on the basketball court, the rest of the prom a blurred background.
Then there was the shouting. His college choice, her failing grades, her need for him every hour of the day. Then, he found them. Behind the bleachers at the track meet, her and that same kid he had punched years before, arms around each other, faces inseparable.
He grits his teeth, crushing the filter and breathing out his nose like a bull.
He didn't have words to say. All she said was, "it's time for something new" then left with that guy. He sat there behind the bleachers while the track meet finished, with everyone left, and until the sun was just setting. He walked home.
He finishes the last of his cigarette, drops it with the other two, and sighs. He shakes his head, gets into the car and fires it up. It coughs a bit and with the noise, he sees a light go on in her room. The car rolls forward, gaining speed, and disappears past the street lights in the fog.
Yeah, we've all seen those scenes. We know what they mean to. But that's just a movie. He's just a character. That street is just a set. The cigarettes probably aren't even real either. That's the thing. Life can't be nearly as cinematic.
I know, because here I am. Standing on her street in front of her house, leaning on my parents van. I can't afford a car for myself. These cigarettes are clove since real ones irritate my asthma even worse. I don't have a nice coat on since the weather is still too dang hot for me to wear something like that. And the cigarette butts on the ground are far more numerous.
See, I don't have five to seven minutes at the end to wrap up, give the audience an ending, and let the credits roll. I could stand here all damn night and nothing would change. Real people can't move on so easily. Real people don't get those emotional sound tracks playing, or see their memories in black and white. No, real people like me stand here, trying to emulate what they saw in a movie, all the while being totally unable to get her out of my head.
And when I leave, driving off in a van with the broken radio stuck on some talk show, I know I won't be able to move past her for a long time still.
