On Christmas Eve my family attended midnight mass (we’re night people. we like to get it all out of the way the night before so we can sleep late Christmas Day before leaving for my grandmother’s, which requires all necessary energy and reserves to keep my big trap shut).
We got there twenty minutes early to make sure we got good seats. For what? So we can sit close enough to see the priest’s unusually large pores? Come on, it’s easier to people-watch from the back.
For the next twenty minutes I resigned to sit back in the pew and people-watch. There’s the under-twenty girls who get all dolled up like they’re going out to a fucking party, there’s the over-twenty girls like me who clearly don’t give a damn and don’t bother to wear make-up or even put on heels. The middle-aged parents who look too tired to stand up let alone take another hour with their adolescent children. Let’s not forget the teenage boys with unruly hair in desperate need of a haircut and someone to explain the “two spritz maximum” rule of wearing cologne.
One such youngster caught my eye. Tall and thin, dark hair in need of a trim, big nose, badly coordinated clothes. Every time my eyes took a pass to gaze at all the people walking in and out of my line of sight, they brought me back to this particular guy.
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