Those Little Notes

This post is brought to you by justWink. Cards just got awesome.

I was staying at a friend’s house once, and because someone else was using the bathroom to which I’d been designated, my host offered to let me use his. So I walked through his bedroom and did that. (Side note: isn’t it always exciting to be in the real bathroom? With everything in its natural state — clothes in the places they were tossed, prescriptions out, mysterious salves … out, the temptation to open the medicine cabinet very, very great, but you’re a respectful and perfect guest, and would never — it’s almost like a tiny safari into your host’s soul. Take no pictures, touch no animals. Anyway.)

I was washing my hands, and saw a note on his mirror — the corner of a magazine page torn off and taped up: “Hey Baby, I just wanted to tell you I love you. x”

It was signed with his girlfriend’s initial, and I think I may have actually put my hand over my heart like an old woman in a movie. But it was so sweet, and made me so happy. And then I felt guilty for reading something private. And then I felt sad, because I missed my boyfriend, who had also slipped a card into my bag before I’d left home.

I’d found it two days into my trip. I’d explain what it was here, but it involves a whole backstory with a joke about pottery, and probably no one cares. This was before we said “I love you” (and before we broke up!), so in all our emails and notes we agonized over how to say what we felt — actually, pre-ILY is a pretty great time for coming up with adorable turns of phrase. Afterward, “I love you” kind of plugs the gap. Anyway, the note was like an Easter Egg voicemail. Or like a surprise Tupac hologram performance. I could hear and feel him, for a second, unexpectedly.

Later, back home, he and I got into the habit of putting the same — wait, I was just about to write the rest of this sentence out, but 1) it’s unbearably cute and people might make fun of it, in a nice way, but I would still feel nervous, possibly because 2) even all this time later it still feels fresh. Pulling a carrot up before it’s gotten carrot-sized. Also I’m imagining everyone does this type of note-planting, but maybe doesn’t talk about it for a reason, because it’s one of the last really good, private things.

There was also the time a boyfriend hid something for me somewhere, but I knocked it out of place and didn’t find it until he emailed to ask if I’d found that thing he left me in [that place] and I said no, and then frantically looked there and everywhere around it, and everywhere around that, and couldn’t find anything, and felt miserable because I’d just vacuumed but was totally game to go through the vacuum bag, until I saw the faintest hint of white in the deepest recesses of the under-radiator area, and there it was, a [thing].

If I got hit by a car and someone went VERY carefully through all the weird folds and flaps of my wallet they’d find a note from my ex-boyfriend of 10 years ago that’s a single word written in pencil on a piece of paper that’s about a third the size of a postage stamp, which I’ve somehow kept through four wallets. I don’t even talk to that guy anymore, but he’d tucked it somewhere in my room before we broke up, and I found it somewhere else, months later. Ugh.

The further I get into this, the worse I feel. I think I’m ruining them for myself.

But if I’m going to do that, I’ll at least go out with a bang!

I have a secret note that I was going to give the most recent person I was in love with at a specific time, but we broke up before the specific time came, and now it’s just another thing I carry around in my wallet. My wallet, the little love graveyard.

When do we throw these things out? Ever?

Will someone please steal my wallet? Just kidding.

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