Sweater Guy and Cubicle Girl

A Memory

One day my dad dropped off a box of my old things. My parents were moving out of my childhood home and found a few things I had left. I was happy too see some of my stuff. I found my old teddy bear, a yearbook, and even a diary from middle school! I opened up the diary to see some of the things I had written, when a particular entry had caught my attention. I was reading it in the living room so I called over Corey to show him, "Hey Corey, look! This kid from my old diary reminds me of you!"

He was folding clothes and giving KitKat a Mariah Carrey concert that he never asked for. "WHEN YOU WALK BY EVERY NIGHT TALKIN SWEET N LOOKIN FINE!" Could be heard through the whole house. He continued to ignore me until he finished the chorus of the song and finally he goes, "Wut'd you say?"

I rolled my eyes and just laughed at him, "Look here, this journal entry. The little boy in it kinda sounds like you." I began to read the entry aloud.

July 11th 2005

            Today I had to stay at dad's work again. Camp was closed so he brought me to his job and had me wait in the break room until mom could come and pick me up. I hate waiting in there! It's totally lame and boring and the TV only ever plays that old people show, Seinfeld. But, at least there's always snacks. I just don't understand why dad won't let me stay home alone yet, I'm 11! I'm basically a middle schooler now. This time I brought my school bag with my laptop so maybe I wouldn't be so bored. He left me there in the morning and told me to "be good." Just like usual. But, when I went into the break room there was another kid there. That wasn't very normal, usually I'm the only one. This kid was probably the cutest little boy I had ever seen. He looked around maybe 5 years old and was sitting up on the stool with his legs swinging, watching a weird foreign cartoon on the TV. He had blonde hair in a bowl cut and glasses much too big for his little face. I sat down next to him and said "hi."

He looked at me and repeated, "hi."

"What's your name?" I asked.

He looked at me confused.

"Your name, what is it?" I repeated myself thinking maybe he didn't catch what I said the first time.

He looked confused again and told me, "Sorry" and went back to watching his show. The show was in a weird different language but he seemed to understand it. He giggled at the screen and pointed, repeating something they had said in the show, "Sobaka!"

Then I realized, he didn't speak English. The credits of the cartoon looked like Russian so I brought out my laptop and went on a translating online website that my teacher showed me. I looked up the phrase "your name" and tried to pronounce the crazy words. "Va-sheh... Imya?"

He looked at me and said, "Constantín. Vashe-Imya?"

"Oh—uh Ella."

"Ella?" He said, smiling.

I nodded. It was odd that someone just left their strange little non-english speaking son in the room all by himself. I continued to translate more Russian phrases. I started with asking his age, "skol-ko tebe let?"

He said, "pyat!" and held up 5 fingers.

"I'm 11." I said, holding up my pointer fingers together to make an 11.

He nodded in understanding and then went back to his cartoon. By then I was bored again so I started doodling in my journal. I drew my dream boyfriend again! He's a vampire and totally hot and he has black hair like those dreamy emo guys on Myspace and he wears a cross necklace and a skull t-shirt and like he was raised by werewolves so they named him Wolf and he's like totally hot and dreamy and perfect.