This came to me via Facebook Memories this morning…

Facebook memories are a good antidote for gaslighting. So are diaries. And blogs like this one.

I was spending Thanksgiving week at Walt Disney World that day, and had visited my high school crush at his place of work in one of the restaurants there where he works as a waiter. I used to hang out after closing time and we’d have chats lasting so long at times I would have to be escorted out of the park (Cheerfully and politely because it was Disney World after all…) to my hotel, lest the Langoliers find me. The fact was that after the last fireworks of the night not everything closed on the hour. The rides and restaurants would close of course, but the stores remained open until very late because departing guests might want to buy just one more thing, and Disney leaves no money on the table.

This would have been two years after we reconnected, and I was already beginning to see how his affections ran warm, hot, and cold and it was hard to predict what I was going to encounter on any particular visit. The fact was it was a minefield from the start, and I just got used to periodically being allowed to wander through this lovely pastoral landscape, that would occasionally explode under my feet.