Broken Melancholy

It was a quiet day. I spent most of it inside my air conditioned office fixing more broken computers. I’ve made good progress this week, but mostly, it’s been full of solitude.

To break up the monotony, I walked around the neighborhood near my school a few times throughout the day. During one walk, I was greeted by an elementary school student playing with her sister in her yard. “Hi Mario,” she said, and just those words broke whatever melancholy I had been feeling at the moment. “How’s your summer going?” I asked her. “Good,” she said, then ran across her yard and began to play again. Later, I ran into a recent graduate and his girlfriend also going for a walk, and we waved and said our hellos. I returned to my office and cherished both my brief but valuable moments of human contact and the very refreshing AC.