Sliding down a playground slide, hot metal burning bare legs.
Done a thousand times a day, in backyards, at schools, wherever a child
wants the thrill of falling, their mass multiplied by gravity accelerating
them down to the ground.
Newton’s second law of physics. The slide personified.
Such a simple thing, the slide. No effort required. Less
strenuous than swinging, pumping your legs to reach new heights.
Less complicated than the see saw, compensating for the weight of the other
side, struggling to keep things balanced. You just have to sit there,
and the unseen force of the earth does all the work.
Change happens the same way, sometimes.
Kathy, a nice young woman, sat next to Will, a nice young man, on the
couch in her nice one-room apartment.
The two were good friends, had been since college, and spent most of
their free time together. Watching movies, going to concerts, commiserating
about their jobs and single status - the usual sorts of things nice young
people do to fill the time.
Despite all that, though, they didn’t consider themselves a couple -
simply friends. As they often sighed dramatically, sex overcomplicated
relationships, and sometimes it was nice to just have someone to talk to.
They talked a lot. In fact, they were talking that very night.
It was late, but they hadn’t thought to look at the clock for some time
now. The conversation was too intense for that.
It hadn’t started that way, of course, but the subjects had, without
acknowledgement, gotten more and more personal until the only things that
seemed to exist were the movement of ideas, the exchange of thoughts.
Two minds, busily keeping up the pace, the flow of perceptions uninterrupted
until, suddenly, they were drained of words and there was nothing left
to discuss.
Groping for something to say, Kathy looked at Will.
Will looked at Kathy.
And after a flash of tension, they both smiled.
“Let’s just sit here a while, Kathy. We don’t need to talk.”
The couch was comfortable. The fireplace was glowing warmly.
The wine was thick and heavy.
“You know what, Will? We really don’t.”
The room was still with the slight pressure of sudden silence, but it
became companionable after a few minutes. After all, the whole purpose
in getting together had been to relax - and nothing was quite as relaxing
than the simple presence of a close friend.
There were no words between them, but they were still communicating,
in some way. Body language, slight sighs.
It was primal. Primal is the word.
But something else was happening, in these quiet moments of peace.
An event of the physical - not the linguistic.
For maybe it was the slight slickness of the couch’s upholstery.
Maybe it was a slight defect in the construction of Kathy’s living room
floor. Maybe it was the tilt of the earth itself.
Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest will remain
at rest.
With the presence of the other acutely known, neither Will or Kathy
were at rest.
That only leaves the alternative.
Slowly, slowly, Kathy slid to rest directly against Will’s side.
It was the easiest thing in the world.
Bodies grow. Everyone knows this.
But to notice a body grow? Impossible. The movements are
too small, the changes too minute. It takes something that doesn’t
change - a suddenly too-short pair of pants, a pair of shoes that fit a
month ago, a bra that once clasped easily - to bring notice to one of life’s
basic facts.
These revelations can be startling. But they shouldn’t be.
Change is the same way. For there are no events that occur completely
spontaneously. There’s always some sort of build-up.
A presidential assassin is not born out of the blue. Events happen
that mold him into who he is. He is slowly changed into the person
of fate, and the events that lead to his change lead to the world’s change.
However, this change is only known when the papers announce the shooting
of a national leader. It is then that the world looks up and notices
the change that came with the creation of a John Wilkes Booth or a Lee
Harvey Oswald.
The change that we all embrace, then, is really just recognition. Acknowledgement.
Without acknowledgement, change continues on, slowly and steadily. Unnoticed.
Same couch, different night. New bottle of wine, a barely smoldering
fire. Another conversation, slowly building in intensity until the
need for silence became overwhelming.
Will and Kathy sat next to each other, without an inch between them,
comfortable and relaxed.
They moved occasionally - to sip their wine, to watch the firelight
flicker against the wall. There was no real effort to break the silence.
But after finishing off her wine, Kathy sat up abruptly, putting the
glass on the coffee table her feet were propped up on. Returning
to her niche by Will’s side, she placed her now empty right hand on her
right thigh.
Their legs were extremely close together, however - and it took only
a slight movement to slide Will’s left hand, which had been resting on
his left thigh, onto Kathy’s right.
Instinct slid fingers into interlocking positions. Intuition clasped
one palm against the other.
Will and Kathy held hands by the fire.
It was the easiest thing in the world.
Erosion. Mother Nature’s most surprising form of change, even
more subtle than the process of growing. For with growth, you can
find indicators, ways of measuring how much progress has been made.
With erosion, you don’t notice the ground’s change until it slides away
from underneath you.
Erosion is not limited to hills and cliffs, however. Throw a rough
stone into the ocean, and it will be worn down into a smooth pebble by
the time a decade’s through. Hit a wooden board repeatedly, and the
board will eventually snap in two.
Let the walls around two souls rub against each other often enough,
and those walls will slowly disappear.
That is how two people fall in love - not through one dramatic rescue
or one passionate night. It’s simply the erosion of protecting walls,
each worn down until there is no choice but to let the other in.
Such erosion is a change through time. Unnoticeable to those involved.
Not acknowledged, not recognized. Instead, existing quietly, waiting
to be seen.
You can blame erosion on laziness, if you want. For if it’s noticed
in time, erosion could be prevented.
But in order to stop erosion already in progress, you have to stand
up against the disintegration. And one person against the earth’s
gravity? Two people? A lost battle.
Besides, like change, there are good as well as bad types of erosion.
Some stones are meant to be smoothed out. Some boards are meant to
be broken.
Some walls are meant to worn down.
And who are these two people, to stand up against erosion? Why
would they do it? What would there be to gain?
Silly questions, anyway. They’d have to notice it first.
A kiss upon the cheek. Something so casual that neither Will or
Kathy bothered to question it.
Just another way of saying hello, really, or expressing thanks.
Just like a handshake or a hug. It was completely natural, something
that just happened.
Not that it happened that often. But if Kathy said something especially
nice, or Will did something in an extremely considerate manner, then it
was an acceptable response. Point A to Point B. Cause and effect.
There was some difficulty, of course, due to simple logistics.
Kathy practically had to stand on a stool. Will got neck cramps.
Just something that came of a ten-inch height difference. A problem
avoidable with careful planning.
Of course, if the kiss was spontaneous, then careful planning went out
the window. And there would be...
Problems.
Like a kiss upon the cheek sliding down to become a kiss on the lips.
They both knew that, if it happened, it was accidental. That it
wasn’t any big deal. After all, there was no one to tell them what
was appropriate, what wasn’t.
Besides, it felt pretty good. So why bother worrying about it?
Eventually, Kathy just stopped needing to reach so high. Will
stopped needing to lean down so low. A quick peck, that was all.
No big deal.
It was the easiest thing in the world.
It could be said that with words, come recognition. Words have
to be thought out, after all. Even spontaneous statements, burst
out in the heat of the moment, are fueled by the brain. Nouns, verbs,
adjectives ordered into a sentence. They can’t be pieced together
without some knowledge of what was going to be said.
That’s why saying “I love you” means as much as it does in a relationship.
It’s an acknowledgement of erosion, a way of saying, “I’ve slid down, I’ve
fallen.” And that’s why it can change relationships. For better
or for worse. It depends.
Words make things real, bring out hidden feelings and put them into
grammatically correct expressions of truth. If anything can stop
the slide, it is the carefully chosen phrase. The true antithesis
of erosion.
Nature is built on antitheses. Newton’s third law. If something
exists, something else is there to counteract it.
But... Antitheses. They sound negative, confrontational.
However, without one antithesis, the other would be thrown off balance,
askew.
So, not antitheses. Complements. Nature is built on complements.
A far stronger word.
See? The right word choice makes all the difference. The
right phrase, and the force of gravity is slowed.
It’s funny, though, the way things work. One “I love you.”
One acknowledgement of the changes occurring. And it is enough to
stop things from moving any further.
A lone “I love you” can stop the slide. But what about a second
one?
Mass times acceleration equals the force with which one plummets downward.
Newton’s second law again.
Double the mass, and you double the force of the descent. The
words build up a force strong enough to counteract the acknowledgement
of that first “I love you”...
Oh, why bother?
Some things aren’t meant to be analyzed.
They’re only meant to happen.
The couch, again. Wine, again. A fire? No. Earlier,
out of instinct, Kathy had moved to the fireplace to set things ablaze,
but had stopped herself.
“What am I doing? It’s too hot for a fire now.”
Will had looked at her from his place on the couch, startled.
“You know, I hadn’t even noticed. Funny how time seems to pass
by so quickly.”
She chuckled, moving to the couch, taking her place by his side.
“They say time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Funny - I always thought time would take the bus.”
One hand slid into the other as they stared at the unlit fireplace,
smiling a bit.
“It is odd, the way time goes by,” Kathy said after a few minutes.
“You just go through the routine, day by day, week by week, and then one
day, you realize that three months have gone by and you haven’t even noticed.”
“You’re not suggesting that you and I have a routine?” Will bantered
back.
She smiled. “There’s routine in everything, Will. It’s either
there originally, or we create it so that we don’t notice how out of control
the rest of the world is.”
“You’re saying that people create order out of chaos so that we don’t
notice how messed up everything is. Even though it’s inherently dishonest.”
“It’s humanity finding a way to get through the day. You can’t
blame people for being optimistic.”
“Nope. You can’t.”
A comfortable silence fell upon them.
“So, Kathy, what do you focus on?” Will asked suddenly.
“What?”
“What gets you through the day?”
She only thought about it for a second. “Same things as everyone
else. Life. Work. Family.” She paused, for just a second,
then smiled at him. “Friends.”
He leaned over and quickly kissed her. She smirked up at him.
“What was that for?”
He smiled downwards. “I don’t know. Just - being here.”
At that, she leaned up and kissed him back.
With a piece of graph paper, a stopwatch, and Will and Kathy’s cooperation,
you might have been able to make a nice graph describing how long a kiss
lasted in relation to how many kisses had occurred previously. And
you might have been able to predict when the length of one kiss would become
long enough to cross over the boundaries of friendship, into something
else.
But that would have been unnecessary.
Sometimes, you just know something will happen. The excitement
is in the question of “when?”
And with Kathy’s innocently intentioned kiss, the question of “when?”
was answered.
Her mouth more open than usual. Her tongue slipping out in a rush
of instinct. A slight increase of pressure upon a more sensitive
part of Will’s lower lip. Go ahead - blame it on one of those things.
Or just consider it part of the natural progression of life, part of
a process worked out a long time ago by someone who knows more than he’ll
ever tell us.
All that’s important to know is that when Kathy moved to break the kiss,
Will wouldn’t let her. And, after a few minutes, she really didn’t
want to, either.
After a few minutes more, they both came up for air.
Will looked at Kathy.
Kathy looked at Will.
“What happened?” Will asked, through pants, after a few seconds.
“I don’t know. But it was something.” Kathy replied, a little
breathlessly.
Acknowledgement.
They both denied it for a few tense seconds, until their warring minds
and bodies seemed to find an agreement.
“Kathy?”
“Yeah, Will?”
“I liked it.”
She stared at him, a little shocked.
Nothing puts things in perspective like the right choice of words.
“You know what, Will?” she said quietly, after a few more seconds of
silence.
“What?”
“I loved it.”
His response took a few seconds. But it came rushing out quickly.
“So did I.”
And with that, they moved back towards each other, their mouths joining
again in a furious dance.
They slid down into each other, faster than anyone could have predicted.
For it was the easiest thing in the world.