as an avid list maker, the production of notes comes naturally to me. any time my pen hits the paper , for a purpose other than taking notes in lecture, i am teleported into a state of utopia, so just as any addict, i try to create that sensation as much as possible.

how do i create that sensation as much as possible, you ask? *drum roll*

leaving notes for other people! leaving notes for other people is awesome. why? because the person receiving the note almost feels as giddy as they do if they receive a handwritten letter via snail mail. leaving notes is nostalgic; it takes us back; back to the mysterious floral haze of summers, when we couldn’t bike across town with our friends unless leaving a note for our parents, when boys left love notes in our cubbies (that never actually happened…did it?), when our parents left us notes in our lunches, when we escaped the awful imprisonment of class by secretly communicating with our friends through the old note pass; now we just text our friends or play a game of temple run 2 to pass the time. for these reasons, i have always loved leaving notes for people.

i guess i have had a long standing relationship with notes, as im sure many people have, and i can credit this love of notes to my family, because even though there was always a lot of note passing between my friends and i, it was the notes within my family that added all the sentiment.

one of my earliest memories of note giving was when i was probably about 7 years old. in my mind, my mom travelled a lot for work, but i can’t quite be sure how accurate this statement is, as these types of events are often inflated in a child’s memory. anyways, in my mind my mom travelled for business a lot. the funny thing about this is that it wasn’t as if i was the only one who was sad during these separations, in fact, it seemed like the couple of times a year that my mom would go away, the entire family would be kind of shaken. i can remember a couple of heartbreaking goodbyes at train stations, and some pretty hilarious events that took place while my mother was on said business trips (for example, one time she came home to find that a) i had knocked my front tooth out while running up the stairs and b) my brother’s beautiful blonde hair had been shaved into a buzz cut. females everywhere can join in on this horror…the male haircut). anyways, one fantastic thing that came from these little business trips was the desire to shorten the distance between us. one time, my dad, brothers, and i had the idea to write tons of little notes before one of my mom’s trips; we snuck into her suitcase before she departed, and ransacked her bag with little phrases that would hopefully remind her that we were always with her, when in reality it just probably made her burst into tears in her hotel room before that big business meeting she had. c’est la vie.

another *~treasured*~ note moment was just recently, when i was back in ontario for christmas break. it was the last day of my break and, like the list maker that i am, i had scribbled down all the things i needed to quickly get done before my departure back to vancouver. to remind myself that this list was documenting important things, i wrote “important reminders” at the top of the page and doodled a heart balloon over the words. you can always get my attention with a heart-shaped balloon. anyways, when i got up in the morning to frantically get everything checked off the list, i noticed that my dad had sneakily inserted his own important reminder within my heart balloon. naturally, i bursted into tears. apparently leaving notes has a reoccurring reaction in my family.

scooby is one of my nicknames

okay relax, despite being a fan of any form of sentiment, i don’t just love sentimental notes. i am accepting of all kinds of notes. mean notes, funny notes, dirty notes, philosophical notes, confession notes, sexy notes, blank notes………

last saturday chloe and i realized the weather was going to be nice (for once) in vancouver. we frantically tried to assemble an organized basketball game, mainly just so we could relive the fresh prince of bell air opening credits. anyways, it soon became apparent that most of the desired teammates are employed, and would in fact be working that saturday. did chloe and i let this get us down? nuh-uh. did chloe and i let our friends suffer on a beautiful day while trapped in the fascist confines of employment? nuh-uh. instead, we decided to “make people’s days”. looking back, we got a little cocky, assuming we could make days. anyway, we spent saturday outdoors, while also visiting members of the “employed club”, delivering them love notes with real kisses and cut-out felt hearts, along with that particular individual’s favourite treats. we also did a couple of jumping-high-fives in the streets, and yelled happy birthday in unison to a couple of people who were clearly celebrating their birthdays. after interrogating our employed friends for answers/reactions, we found that we did in fact make their day.

and that’s why notes make the world go round.