An Extremely Confident Recovery
I remember being at school at lunchtime. I’d already eaten. Beyond that, the facts become unreliable.
For reasons I no longer possess, a friend of mine was chasing me. This was not unusual. It had become a recurring game, though the premise—if there ever was one—has been lost to time.
Our grade sat in the upstairs section of the cafeteria, which meant that eventually I ran out of viable running space. So naturally, I expanded the territory. Down the stairs I went, still being chased, momentum fully committed.
The last two steps are where it happened.
I didn’t quite fall face-first, but it was dramatic enough to deserve applause. Stomach down. Palms flat. A full, audible slap against the floor.
Now, a reasonable person might pause here. Assess damage. Reconsider their life choices.
I did not.
I sprang back up immediately, like a cat reacting to the sound of a tuna can, and took off running again, straight out of the lunch hall. No pain. No hesitation. Pure adrenaline.
I don’t remember how the chase ended. Only that, for a brief moment, gravity lost.
A Modest Case for Garlic and Oil
I remember the first—perhaps the first—time I decided that spaghetti aglio e olio was my favourite thing in the world.
It was the dish I always chose at the club where we went for swimming lessons. I would come out of the changing rooms damp and pruned, hair still slicked back by water, skin carrying that unmistakable chlorine smell that never quite leaves you, no matter how thoroughly you towel off.
And then I’d sit down and eat an entire bowl of it, greedily, happily, as though I’d earned it.
I don’t know what it was about that pasta that caught me so completely. It wasn’t remarkable. Oil, garlic, heat. Nothing to mythologise. Nothing that should have stayed with me.
It isn’t even my favourite anymore.
And yet, when I think of it now, I don’t taste the food so much as the moment. The faint sting of chlorine in my nose. The heaviness in my limbs after swimming. The particular satisfaction of being starving in a very specific, very earned way.
All I feel now is nostalgia. Clean, warm, and slightly absurd.
