For what is remembered.

Ah yes, for me, spring has finally started. Green tendrils gently push their way out of the ground, reaching for the sun. The birds are chirping. The increasing warmth has initiated the reproductive cycle of all things green once more. Pollen is in the air. The sniffles, the sneezes, as well as the horse sized pills filled with psuedoephedrine and histamine blockers are all reminders for me that spring has begun anew. And, as it is with all new beginnings, Love flourishes. So it begins:

You know how your mind can forget things if you don't make regular use of them? Like Calculus for instance. When do you think that you will need to use dy/dx in the next few years? A better example would be baseball. When's the last time you broke out the ole baseball bat and swung at a few fastballs? Through atrophy, we lose skills that aren't needed, much like the muscles we used for throwing a ball disappear if we don't use them regularly. If you stop exercising, well, you won't be getting more muscular.

Through deprivation, the senses of the body can also be dulled. If you listen to loud music, the cilia in your ears start to lose their sensitivity to softer noises. If you stop working with your hands, the calluses you developed start to disappear. If you stop training your brain to constantly learn, you run the risk of it being less pliant when it comes time to learn something new. (That's a medical fact, the brain certainly follows the use it or lose it philosophy.)

Which brings this post back around to me. For more than two years, I have not been in a relationship, and with the small number of female friends I have, I am trying to be a gentleman. Which for me, means no unwarranted physical contact that is initiated by me. So, without such contact, well, the memory of touching something soft and feminine has shrivelled into this tiny corner at the back of my mind.

Remember a while back, I had mentioned this girl I had met in my engineering class? Of course you do. Well, things have been moving a bit slowly, and as I said a number of times (mostly to remind myself), I need to be focusing on my school work. Well, the other day, she was teasing me, we began to horse around, and as you can imagine, I made physical contact with her trying to keep her away from her cel phone. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but as the professor walked in and started to lecture, I thought to myself, "Wow, her arm was very soft and smooth."

Yep, that thought was very mind shattering. I'm not sure if it's a genuine reaction or merely sarcasm speaking here. It's was at this moment that I reflected that I hadn't touched anything soft and silky in nearly two and a half years. I had forgotten what female contact was like. My sense of touch had atrophied from this unintended deprivation and I had started to forget how touching someone felt like. Then, I began to remember as the feelings quickly flickered through me.

Feelings that reminded me of the fact that I hadn't looked at anyone with that euphoric glee one gets when you see someone you care deeply about. Or touched someone in an intimate way that shared how strongly a person can feel for another person. Rememering that I hadn't said something nice to someone just to see them smile. Forgotten were the smell of freshly washed hair and the smooth glide of gentle fingers across my skin. The lost memories of that warm closeness when body touches body in that companionable way that couples have. I remembered that it was for these memories that I risked my sanity and left the safety of loneliness to enter a relationship with another person.

Then the next thought to cross my mind as my professor droned on about resonant circuits: "Do I even remember how to kiss a girl?" (Odd how something so inane can mean so much when it jumps at you from out of the blue.) The sudden realization that perhaps even that skill had most likely atrophied was startling. And now, I could see her in my peripheral vision. I suddenly felt very shy and selfconscious. I must have started to fidget or something.

If this were a fictional story, now would be a very good time for the professor to pick on me since my attention had digressed from what he was intoning at the front of the classroom. Which is exactly what he did. "So, Grant, for this unity gain circuit, what is the output voltage?" Quite flustered, I glanced quickly at the board and the question finally registered. "Uh. Uhm. For this circuit, the output should be the same as the input?" "Correct. Now, please pay closer attention for the rest of the class."

I went beet red and I certainly paid attention for the rest of the class. After class, my fellow classmates teased me about daydreaming in class. They started asking me if the girl I was in la-la land about was hot. I quietly ignored their comments and packed up my books saying that I was merely tired. Little did they know who I was daydreaming about. She teased me about the daydreaming also. All I could do was smile and say was that I was thinking about something I had forgotten about a while back.

What am I getting myself into? Now, if only I could wipe the silly grin off my face.