Lights

Ever see things and are brought back to a memory from your childhood in a flash.

It happened tonight when I went to Bloomington to see a movie. We were heading back from Bloomington and I started counting the street lights.

I was ten again and coming home from my Grandma's. I was lying on my back in the back seat of our white mini-van. My head was on the plastic siding and had started aching and the forty-five to fifty minute drive seemed like forever at nine at night, especially after a large meal.

My parents didn't like to listen to music, probably because they thought we would fall asleep, I never did. The rumbling of the car and the yellow lines on the road seemed to flow into one as i lied in the back. I pressed my face on the window because the heat in the car was overbearing.

And I started counting the street lights. 1,2,3,4.....34,35,36.....67,68,69.....

They seemed to never end, and we were moving at a speed where it was a competition to see if I could count every single one that I could see. If I lost count I had to start over.

Then another memory came flashing back and I remember the first time I saw Chicago at night on an airplane. Which in all reality isn't as spectacular as it might sound but I will never forget it. Those lights that seemed to never end. I tried to count them but it was nearly impossible.

The flight attendent came over the intercome and stated that we were ten miles out of our destination and we would be coming into the city limits very shortly. I remember first seeing the lights as the clouds seemed to part. Suddenly there was a massive amount of small lights that were only about a centimeter apart, and as we slowly descended the lights seemed to get larger.

Simple and insignificant lights seem to mark every part of my life.