Me + You

Walking down the sidewalk (when you're not the one sticking your name in it) is such a mundane experience, we often don't take the time to stop and see what we're stepping on. Probably just a bunch of leaves, maybe some ants, a couple hundred declarations of love? Possibly? 

Walking down sidewalks on my own I've seen plenty of names and several Lee + Denise's or TG + RP's but never paid them any mind. As I began to take attention to them, I first noticed the sheer amount of pairings there were spread out in sidewalk corners (I remember coming across maybe 8 of them in one day), second how difficult it probably is to draw a decent looking heart in half-hardened cement, and third how necessary it is to consider their permanence. These names and initials are linked together long after the couple may have fallen apart; their longevity could last longer than a lifetime. Etched into these walkways and ignored by passersby, they only really mean something to the real Lee and Denise, the real TG and RP. And also people like me.

Did Lee and Denise have these considerations while scratching their names into the cement? Is this longevity their motivation for writing their names in the ground? Do they come back every spring to see their names and relive the moment once again? Or was it just a spur of the moment—oh cool hey lets stick our names into this block of concrete so it'll be here forever lolol—kind of thing?

I know so little about Lee + Denise, and even less so about TG and RP (I don't even know their names!). But passing by these pairings on the street alongside others placed every few steps I can't help but wonder why people feel the need to mark themselves as essentially together forever on that slice of sidewalk, and how they permanently associate themselves as being present, at some point in time, exactly on that particular walkway on Main Street or Jefferson Avenue or Chieftan Way, wherever they were when they were together digging a stick through the concrete.