dive into mark

Tobias Seamon: When Pigs Fly. I was out back last night bringing the dog some scraps. Was just around sundown, and I could see them pigs frolicking in the light, all lit up orange and purple. I’ll tell you, boys, it was a beautiful thing to behold.

When I was in fourth grade, I had a crush on the girl who lived down the street. Her name was Ann. In a brave and courageous move, I wrote her a note asking her if she would go to the fair with me. Every year there was a “Fun Fair” at a local school, St. Denis, with, oh, I don’t know, fair-type stuff. Rides and cotton candy, I suppose, and brave young hearts extending hands of friendship, holding hands tentatively, absorbing all the lights and sounds and mystery of it all, wondering what this was all about.

I don’t actually know what the fair was like, because I never got there. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I put the note, in a brave and courageous way, in an envelope and put her name, in a brave and courageous way, on it, and I walked all the way down the street and put the envelope in her mailbox. I tried to walk down the street in a brave and courageous way, but it’s difficult to do this when your father is walking next to you and pestering you with repeated questions about what the note is for. I never did admit to him what the note was for. It was to ask her to the St. Denis Fair.

It ended badly, of course. These stories always do. The next day I got a note in my mailbox, hand-addressed and hand-delivered (without a stamp). It was the first piece of mail I ever received, and the last one that ever really mattered. This is what it said:

Mark,

Thank you for your note.

I will go to the St. Denis Fair with you…

…

WHEN PIGS FLY!

She then proceeded to tell everyone in Chestnutwold Elementary School what she had done, and I was the laughingstock of the fourth grade for days afterward. There was pointing, and giggling, and snorting noises, and flapping of arms, and noses upturned with fingers to make them look like snouts, and other obvious childishness. Fourth graders are not known for their subtlety, or originality. And I never did manage to get to the St. Denis Fair, but maybe now I’ll get my chance.