ENCOUNTERS

How is it that we can know someone for years and feel like we only know of them? On the flip side why are we able to connect with strangers so quickly? …. Real-life encounters with different people, names have been changed to preserve anonymity.

Lucas

“What am I doing?” His hands fall to the steering wheel as the weight of the epiphany settles in. A realization has occurred. I didn’t know him for long and yet, I understood him fully. Our exchanges up until that point had been short. A “hello” in the morning with a friendly wave and when we had a free moment, a “how are you?” that was never answered with a true response. We were recipients of orders. We weren’t sure how it got to this point or how it got this bad. We sat there in silence. Two strangers in a car, making a horrible realization. Another task given to us at the same time had led us on this trip. It only took two stop lights for the invisible partition to fall. We knew we were safe, the breath of relief from our lungs was almost audible. Who talked first? Who was brave enough to ask the question that led us to determine we were both prisoners of an anxiety-filled mind game? I took the time to speak slowly, feeling the weight of each word sit on my conscience before letting it all out. I felt each muscle contract as I formed the sounds, wanting him to know that my underlying tone was really telling him to leave. Get out immediately.

Jerry

His address came to me one day. A man named Jerry with no family. He never married and never had kids so there wouldn’t be a living piece of him when it was his time to go.  I met him in person, thousands of miles away from home.  A sweet old man far up in the mountains with fog that mirrored the cloudiness of his memory. He had traveled all over the world. When you got him talking he would tell you all about it, whatever came to him in that moment. It wasn’t until later that I began to realize that these flippant memories were being told with a purpose. Every moment in time is planned for a reason. Each story he told were things I needed to hear, things I needed most in that time of my life. I longed for more of those stories so when we were separated by more miles, he told me about New Zealand through a hand-written card. The cards were written by a nurse who took care of him. This is the first year the cards have stopped coming. There is nothing left for Jerry to tell me.

Alex

He’s older, but it’s hard to say by how much because stress can do a number on you.  A couple of years at this location and several at the one prior. This one was supposed to save him. He’s brainwashed and yeah, he’s a nice guy. But nice guys either realize they’re getting screwed for being too nice and get angry or they suck it up and remain hopeful. He was the latter. It was clear by the way he walked like Atlas. Shoulders shrugged, taking on weight because he never said no. Taking on weight because he always justified it. “When will you leave?” As I asked, it appeared the thought had never occurred to him or maybe it did but he never thought to act on it. After minutes prior of explaining his hopes and dreams he paused to think of a response. But he shrugged much like Atlas and began explaining that he couldn’t due to carrying the weight of the world. After all, who was I to tell him to leave? What could I have done to make him see that he could?

Unknown

I recall a time I was working at the campus bookstore. This guy came up to the register with an armful of books. They weren’t textbooks, they were all old-looking books which was a rare sight for a college student. I asked him what class they were for. He said “No class. If I find a book related to space, I feel inclined to buy it immediately. This is not budget-friendly in any way, I just love learning about space.” We then dove into a deep conversation about space, of which I knew nothing except the Blue’s Clues song that told me the order of the planets. However, I was intrigued. We weren’t attracted to one another. I felt inclined to ask him questions that I never felt to ask before and I listened intently for the answers he gave willingly. Did I need to know this information? No. Did he? Apparently not, seeing as he was a theater major, yet for that period of time we talked about space like we were about to jet off to the moon. I never saw him after that, not even during finals weeks to buy scantrons, but it was the longest conversation I had had with anyone including my closest friends for quite some time. I felt a sense of purpose again.

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