Quote:
There’s a particularly cheesy looking section of the carnival that you happen to pass by, requesting you take one of the provided slips of colored paper and write down a favorite holiday memory and pin it to the excessively large festively decorated tree stationed in the corner, near the children’s play area. Maybe you’re feeling nostalgic, maybe you’re doing it to humor a companion but for whatever reason, you find yourself jotting down a memory. Regardless of whether or not the memory you've written down is true, you find yourself dreaming of this memory in your sleep that evening, very vividly. Maybe you're reliving the memory, maybe you're standing in the background and watching it all unfold. Maybe this fabricated memory has you regretting writing down anything at all, as you experience this for yourself. Either way, guess it was on your mind for longer than you thought!
When talk of the carnival had first started, Nolan didn’t pay any attention to it. While Romano’s may have been known as a military school, they still cared a lot more about classes than one would think, and he had been in the middle of studying for all of his finals, unable to even comprehend that anything else was going on. But finally, after slogging through all of them and glad that he was only going to take one more semester at the school, he could finally listen in to what everyone had been talking about.
Apparently, some “extravaganza” was happening, and everyone wanted to go. Nolan rolled his eyes at first. It was just another holiday city celebration, what would be so special about it? In the end though, since others were talking about it so much, he had decided to go and see what it was all about.
And when he did well… there wasn’t too much that interested him. Though he had been talked into going to one of the sections, probably the kid’s section, and was told to write a “favorite” holiday memory down.
Nolan was annoyed by the thought. There were no good holiday memories. But he decided he would write down the one he thought was the “best” out of all of them.
He was an only child, somewhat doted on, when his parents were there, but most of the time they were gone, and he was left to fend for himself. That included holidays. Now, he didn’t begrudge his parents for having to leave him alone, that would be stupid. They were both very important people and they wouldn’t get to live the lives that they did if they gave up their jobs just because they wanted to spend some more time together.
It would be a lot more time if they were all homeless that’s for sure.
His father was a high-ranking military officer and his mother, not wanting to go down the usual military-spouse life, was a top lawyer at a large law firm. Both of them loved their jobs and they pay they had gotten for them. But that meant that Nolan was often left by himself. Lonely, but logically something that had to happen lest they lose their livelihoods and their home.
His “best” memory however, was once again another lonely Christmas without the two of them, but this time they had video-conferenced him a bit and he was able to make their favorite foods and send it to them during the day. They would be back later, but still, at least he could make his parents a bit happy and give them a small break from their busy lives, even if it meant he still didn’t get to see them as much as he may have wanted.
He finished writing the memory down, and pinned it to the tree, a bit where it was less likely to be seen by others. If anyone had seen him like this that he knew, he would be incredibly embarrassed, and he hated that more than writing down cheesy memories.
