Emma is a senior at Loyola and is majoring in English Writing. She read non-fiction at the November 6th reading.
“The Highlight of my Day”
3:23, approximate, and I am walking Freret St. home from school, looking at my feet and dry leaves against the concrete. That spot where a piece of sidewalk dips as I step on it is my favorite.
3:26 I glance right, as I am likely to do, and happen to meet eyes with a little SE Asian-American girl riding the school bus who, as she is likely to do, glances left. She waves to me. I wave back.
Two observations about eye-contact: One and great is an instant, self-generated assurance that eye-contact is occurring. Two and frustrating is the implicit indeterminateness of what the contact means to the other person and what its ramifications are for both persons as a unit.
3:26:30 – 3:38:45 The bus passes me, stops in traffic, as I pass it I glance again and a repeat of minute 3:26, now with a synchronized smile, like together we’ve been caught. The bus continues and passes me, stops in traffic, a repeat of the first clause of the prior line, now we both giggle.
One observation about smiling: unfeigned smiling is also insurpressible.
