Date The Boy Who Gets Lost

Date the boy who talks large but dreams even larger. Date the boy who doesn’t settle for the low-hanging apples but climbs to the top of the tree just to see if the apples up there taste any better. Because while everyone is busy figuring out which relatives they’re going to give the apples to, this boy has taken a bite out of every apple he’s found, just to make sure he didn’t miss the one that tasted a little sweeter than the rest. This boy sees a door and imagines an adventure, taking three steps forward when most would take one backward. This boy stumbles and falls, blind but not deaf, becoming a little steadier each and every time.

This boy is no fool. To him, the silliest fools are those who stand under the tree waiting for the apples to fall. Those who talk but don’t do, those who have much to say but few stories to tell. But this boy is not perfect, rather far from it. This boy is reckless, self-destructive even. But to him what is life but a race to see who can destroy himself the slowest. And so when a storm rolls by, he seeks not shelter or umbrella or comfort but someone to frolic in the rain with, wondering why anyone was ever scared of getting a little wet in the name of feeling infinite. His friends will ask him a lot of hows and sometimes even some whys but all he says is “better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times”.

I’ve been told this boy is chasing something larger than life. That he wanders alone, like a train without a destination. But the truth is that trains with destinations eventually turn back anyways. Surely one day when the boy becomes a man, his destination may materialize into a family or a career. But for now, this boy is chasing an idea, laying down his tracks, looking for an infinity larger than the one given to him at birth. And he lives, freely, uncertainly, but euphorically, knowing that no apple went untasted.

But this boy also needs a girl. No, not a girl to get lost with him, because it was too easy for Hansel and Gretel. This boy needs a girl that sneaks out at night to plant the seeds for the apple trees so that when the next summer swings by, he can still pick his apples. Because the biggest fault in the boy who gets lost is that he doesn’t know himself. This girl shows him that railway tracks usually come in pairs, apples can be big enough to share, but most importantly that even the most exciting of moments are dull without someone to share them with.  Because one day when this boy becomes a man and that man becomes an old man, he’ll realise that while the memories and the stories will fade into oblivion, the only thing that will remain from his golden years is his undying love for the girl who never turned away when his train never showed up at its destination, knowing that he may be lost but not stupid and he’d find his way back eventually.