Between The Squiggles

Well, so, again, what should we talk about today?

This evening I was watching The Martian. Great movie, of course. While watching Matt Damon figure out how to make potatoes out of poop, I found a pen wedged in the gap of the sofa. You know the one that always seems to get lost and then reappear at odd times? Yeah. I fished it out and started fiddling with it. I have a thing where I always need to keep my hands busy when I watch TV. I don’t think everyone’s like that, especially older generations who weren’t tethered to their phones as much and never developed the reflex to snatch up whatever’s nearby just to keep their hands busy.

Somewhere along the movie, I began scribbling on my palms.

As I doodled a simple rectangle and colored it in, I had the most ordinary epiphany on an even more ordinary day: I hadn’t doodled on my hands since I was… a teenager.

Strange, isn’t it?

How what once filled us with joy quietly slips out of our lives?