“Michael, this is my friend, Jayson.” She said.
“Hi!”
“Hi Michael, here you go.” As she requested, I brought my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for her younger cousin. He seemed grateful for the book but his attention was fixed solely on the paper airplane in his lap.
“So… uhm… what are you two up to this afternoon?” I asked.
“We’re making paper airplanes and then we’re gonna fly them.” He replied with his eyes still fixated on the plane in his lap.
“We’re flying them in the park.” She said, “You’re more than welcome to join us if you’d like to.” She was wearing a simple black cotton dress which gave her the appearance of being a mourner, but an elegant one; the type of mourner I only wished to have in attendance at my funeral versus the members of my family crying over my coffin as if there was money locked inside of it that they couldn’t get to. “So… do you want to come with us?” She repeated. At this point in knowing her, I’d do just about anything to spend time with her and if that meant tossing paper airplanes around in the brutal humidity of an August afternoon then “Sure, I’d love to.”
As we walked to the park, Michael somehow managed to throw his plane into what must’ve been the only puddle in Philadelphia, being that it hadn’t rained in the city for weeks. He looked fairly bummed as he watched his airplane, which now resembled a cried upon Kleenex, float along the surface of the water. Luckily, the elegant mourner came prepared with more paper, and the three of us continued on toward our destination. Once we arrived at the park, we transformed into three low-level Lockheed Martin engineers; we experimented with various folding techniques, design methods, and angles of throwing in order to see who’s plane could fly the furthest.
At some point during our paper airplane throwing, the thought of my funeral returned to me. I did truly hope that when my funeral came, no matter how far off in years it may be, that this girl in the black cotton dress would be an attendee to it, and that she would come in the very same dress she was wearing today. I imagined her as a beacon of serenity amongst the storm of my sobbing family, and that in the midst of all their tears she would hopefully think: “I once knew Jayson. He wasn’t too shabby in bed.” And somewhere, maybe in Valhalla or maybe in Hell, I would say “I told you nigga!” then high-five Sammy Davis Jr.
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