Blue tick the damn thing

Long long time ago

Caught up in juvenile infatuation I could almost hear in my head a chorus of distraction, ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ a constant refrain that I cannot drive out of my head with the worry of love most fervent yet unrequited. Did I not feel that yearning even at the age of 7 and he a few years older playing a father in a game of family the burning tears of emotion filling my eyes whilst I pretended nothing is wrong. A tick for what?

Time passes on to when with another in a forage into what would not be much other than a dare, adolescence getting the better of me, my protégé submits a letter to her and she responds, ‘I am a small girl.’ That small girl a few years later a prefect, my junior but as fate would have it tables turned in ways that could never have been predicted. A tick-off that.

Letters and messages

We met for the school games, they from so far away, it was unlikely we would meet again. Yet, friends, we became and pen-pals more. A letter I sent, even two, unsure they will be delivered and even into oblivion they may have gone. If I do remember what I wrote then. A tickle it was.

Now, we seek in the instant, of gratification that cannot wait. In promptness and alacrity, the response must arrive before we have thought it. Woe betides he that leaves it nanosecond too late for the next will have you at the assizes and guilty, you’ll be found before your excuse is heard. To whom shall you appeal? In the courts of WhatsApp, the distance between you and jail is a blue tick.