Nicole & Carl: Love at First Sight

The smell of freshly made extra-buttered popcorn from the popcorn stand near the exit still lingered in the air around my then twelve-year-old body as I was walking outside of one of the Disney parks of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida on that unforgettable November day almost four years ago. About twenty two of my classmates and I had the opportunity to go on a school trip overseas for almost a week that year to visit NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, located a few minutes outside Orlando, and Disney World in order to learn about gravity, space, and science in general.
We had been having the time of our lives entering roller coasters from the exits while people, which had been in line for who knows how many minutes or hours, watched us with choleric glares as we took our seats. We were heading to another Disney park and, while walking to the bus stop, my friend Nicole bumped into a blond guy with glasses who was entering the park with the rest of his family. The kid had to be between ten and eleven years old and was clearly American. When they bumped into each other “sorry” was the only word that came out of Nicole’s mouth, and, after that, both of them kept walking their respective ways as if nothing had happened.
A few seconds after the bump between Nicole and the unknown kid, Paolo, who had, like me and a few of my other classmates, presence the then unimportant clash between the two kids, came rushing towards Nicole and told her with a huge grin on his face that he couldn’t believe she had let “Carl” go away. Everyone looked at Paolo in confusion as he kept explaining that Carl was the guy she had bumped into and it was obvious that they had fallen in love at first sight. “What are you talking about? We just bumped into each other!” Nicole protested, but there was nothing Nicole could do to prevent what Paolo was going to do next.
“Noli, can I borrow your camera for a minute? I’m going to film a video,” the redheaded boy asked our classmate and friend Alessandra Noli with a smile on his face as we were walking towards the bus, he clearly had something in mind that would make everyone laugh until their stomachs hurt; that’s how Paolo was and still is today. “Sure,” Alessandra said, eager to see what our classmate would do.
Paolo changed the camera’s setting so he could film a video, turned the camera towards his face, pressed the record button, and began singing the funniest, out-of-tune song I’ve ever heard. The song, which was in Spanish, went like this “Nicole y Carl tomaron vino y croissants…” Those simple words made everyone around him, including myself, explode into laughter. We were laughing so hard people around us were probably looking at us as if we were crazy. My stomach was starting to hurt and tears of laughter were forming in my eyes while Paolo kept filming himself singing the rest of his unforgettable song on Alessandra’s camera.
At first, it was obvious that Nicole was in complete shock of Paolo’s actions, since what was occurring was completely ridiculous to her because the only thing that happened was that she bumped into a guy with whom she crossed one short word, but after our comical classmate began singing his tune not even Nicole could contain her laughter.
Whenever my friends and I recall this mirthful memory laughter comes back to us almost as fast as lightning strikes the earth during a thunder storm. We still bother Nicole with “Carl” each time we talk about that day and make jokes about their never ending love. Even though the video was later accidentally deleted, the memory of Carl and Nicole and Paolo’s video is still impressed on our minds and it will always help us annoy Nicole in times of boredom.