Write for ten minutes using this as your opening line: "A funny thing happened on my way to..." Aim for ten minutes. Look at the clock on the bottom-right corner of your screen, start writing, and stop writing ten minutes later. You can write for longer, but shoot for ten minutes minimum.

A funny thing happened on my way to French class the other morning. I usually run late to this class, because I’m always frantically (or not so frantically) working on the homework I neglected to finish the previous night. It’s not an issue of time, or an issue of difficulty. I simple procrastinate to the point of utter ridiculous proportions. I’m procrastinating at this very moment, which means I will probably be running late again tomorrow, but people are used to my schedule.

On the way to class, I usually cut through the university center building because it saves me about a minute, and that day I did. The boy was sitting at the café with a book and a coffee, just like everyone else at the café, but I didn’t really see him. I saw an old friend sitting instead. The funny thing about the brain is the way it associates certain memories with certain sights. My memories are closely tied to articles of clothing, for example, a faded black t-shirt and blue twill shorts, like this boy in the cafe was wearing as he sipped his coffee.

He reminded me of the first boy I had really fallen in love with, in my rather awkward way of falling in love. Most people would say it was something about this boy that reminded me, but I’m quite certain that it was the outfit. I’ve seen so many different boys, tall, short, fat, skinny, all in faded, black shirts and blue twill shorts that by now I know what brings the memories back. Nothing else reminds me of this boy quite like seeing those clothes paired together. I remembered how we took a long time to fall in love, and how he seemed to own no other outfit, and how he moved away when we were so in love that I cried and thought I’d never be the same. And I was right.

As I hurried to French class, I wondered what would have happened if he had been around through high school. I doubted that I would be at the same college, living on my own in a dorm at eighteen. I probably would have stayed closer to home and closer to him, and maybe I would have stayed more of a dreamer. (Though, I am still a dreamer and thinking of myself as more of a dreamer makes me cringe.)

I wondered if he would ever have changed his clothes, just as I had gone from blue jeans, hooded sweatshirts, and tennis shoes to slacks, a red blazer, and a pair of stilettos. He probably would have remained very much the same, stubborn as he was, and I would have been all too eager to stay the same as well.

We believed that to change was to sell our souls, so it was a good thing that he wasn’t around to see it happen to me. I don’t mean that I didn’t miss him for a long time, and didn’t feel like I was dying. (I was rather overdramatic at the time. Still am.) It meant that we could live without each other and thrive.

We gravitated toward each other, which was what really hurt so much. I still don’t know what he thinks about all of our history, but on my end, I believe that I’ll always gravitate toward certain people, and most of them are the ones that I stay away from. I stay away from this boy. The space between us, miles of California roads, helps to keep me from gravitating to him. I like to keep those roads there, and between me and other people from my past. I’m different from who they remember. He and I, we were far too introverted for our own good sometimes. We wouldn’t live outside of ourselves if we were a pair. And I would be in a different place.

I realized this by the time I got to class, I full three minutes early, and smiled at my handsome French TA.