Erie, To be or not to be: What the future holds for me and her

Toby Keller/ Erie Reader

I'm a single guy, attractive enough—blue eyes and thick, brown hair—but I haven't found that special someone yet. I enjoy the usual things like music, walks and whatever, but that girl just hasn't crossed my path. They say my options are endless. As many fish as there are in the sea. More women out there then I can shake a stick at and all that. But what's a young bachelor to do with the responsibility of finding the perfect star in a sky of millions of suns and burning planets? Billions, even.

The task is daunting, but there are other decisions to make and they get easier (sarcasm at its finest). Deciding where I am going to live after I graduate from Penn State Behrend is one of them. Optimistically speaking, there are only so many places on this mudball that are habitable, so my choices are limited in that respect. However, the place I choose to start a career will have a big impact on my life, changing the course of events for better or worse. And I'm picky; I have standards and affinities for certain ways of living. The more I think about it…

Deciding where you want to live is a lot like trying to find the girl of your dreams—you've seen her a million times in your head, she satisfies every taste you crave, and she's out there, somewhere. The thought is maddening. She's just waiting for me to find her. I've been searching, looking for a place between heaven and hell that's comfortable and keeps me feeling alive.

Erie has been trying to get me to commit since I was freshman and first resided with her. But it was always temporary, and we both knew it. Summer time rolled around, or Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, anything important on the calendar and I was gone. I like to think she missed me.

So, I decided to give her a chance. I know she has a wild side, and I like that. I certainly won't shy away from it. And I've heard that to experience Erie, to really know her and fall in love, I have to be with her all the time. I've seen the seasons change from fall into the dead of winter, and then life sprout anew in the spring, but I've never seen her beauty in full blossom. I need to be with Erie when her hair is down and she has on summer dress.

I've already glimpsed her beauty—the fiery sky over the lake, thunderstorms rolling in over the hills past I-90, people walking under trees on State Street in the morning on their way to work. She's a busy woman that can make your head swim in things to do. She also has her rough edges. Take a walk down Wallace Street on a summer evening and you can feel the heat; it's nothing you want to bathe in for long. She has secrets, she has murder cases. She has opportunity and grace. She certainly has character—bubbling and honest, and also strong and sarcastic.

My jobs this summer give me the benefit of mobility, and I have an apartment close to downtown. My summer will be spent with Erie. I expect to see her from every angle. It's going to get intimate, I'm sure of it. We can't always get along, but she seems like a summer fling that has the potential to make a real man out of me. And like any relationship, we'll see where it goes, baby.