Orange House – 6X8 Watercolor $75

Hazy, hot summers, that’s what the house near the creek on Crescent Street makes me think of.

Back in high school, I dated a girl who lived there and was pretty smitten, although I didn’t understand anything about life at the time.

I was egotistical, self-centered, self-important, self-righteous, and ended up being by myself, which makes perfect sense in hindsight. I never treated her badly, rather put her on a pedestal that was too high for her comfort.

I thought I knew what love was and that I was in it when really, I was just in trouble.

Don’t get me wrong, there were many blissful, beautiful moments at that house. Laughter and holidays, everything seemed very real, and in ways it was.

Still, the best thing that girl ever did for me was to kill me.

It shook the soot out of the rocky foundation I existed on and caused it to collapse.

I was reborn, humbler, and somehow stronger.

Now I still have a lifetime of learning experiences I could bring up but Orange House had one of the biggest and best of those and I am thankful for the experience.

The house and the girl are gone now, like so many of us, but I think about that life experience almost every time I fill up at the Citgo gas station that took its place.

The price of gasoline is another miserable experience, but so far I’ve learned nothing about how to cope with it.