Passing Notes
a lost art
The following was written as a Note, but I thought it should cross over into a post. I’d love to hear your stories of note-passing!
Notes.
I’ve been struggling to figure out what to write in the designated “note” section, so I thought I’d go the literal route and talk about notes.
Not the notes we take for an exam or the notes of the scale that turn into song – not the love notes found in bottles floating on oceans or the notes one might identify in a glass of wine. Nope, my mind went right to the notes I used to pass in school.
I remember passing notes, getting that tiny adrenaline rush before sending my note through the maze of students and seats.
My boldest memories are from Junior Year Latin class. In hindsight, the content was unremarkable, though may have felt urgent at the time. Each note a time capsule of dreamy crushes and crushed dreams. They could be as banal as pondering the slow moving second-hand of the clock, as heartbreaking as the latest plotlines on General Hospital, or even as cutting as hard times at home.
The art, however, was in the pass, having to chart a plan that would both go unnoticed by the teacher while landing at its prescribed destination.
Alice and I passed a lot of notes in Mr. P’s Latin class. Alice was a newer friend, someone a grade ahead that I had admired for a long time, but who seemed way out of my league. I was cool but she was very cool and had a reputation for being a bit unapproachable and tough, something I aspired to be.
I don’t remember how we connected, but we maintained a beautiful friendship through the passing and receiving of notes, and over time found a mutual admiration.
Perception is not always reality, though it may lend a framework to play in, break through, and reveal otherwise unavailable truths. And notes were our way of becoming more real to each other.
In some way we were all scribes and post riders, navigating the tricky landscape of school classrooms everywhere. We were a generation connected by this simple delivery system, and we didn’t know it.
Ask a teenager today about notes and they may guide you to the APP Store.
In the texting age, we have lost this temporal art. I’m sure my daughters will one day ponder the lost arts of their generation as they contemplate the passing of time.
If there were an app that could fold this note into a tiny square, I would fashion this digital parchment into whatever shape it would find and hurl it into the void and wonder where it landed.