“If you’re not a teacher, you should be.”

Per usual, the line at the movie theater was outrageously long. I suppose that’s what I get for going to see a movie on a Sunday afternoon, but standing around with forty other people waiting for one of three registers to open so I can order an overpriced Coke is never going to be a pleasant experience, especially when I’m surrounded by families. Worse still, I’m surrounded by children.

My arms are folded and defensive, I may or may not be flexing so the girl in the Paramore shirt can see the muscles I don’t have. Her hair is blue and black, and it looks like she’s there with her boyfriend. “Doesn’t matter,” I think to myself, “I’m miles better looking than that guy.” His hair is dry and curly, a frizzy mop given the humid weather outside. He’s wearing a brown shirt that’s two sizes too big. “At least my clothes fit,” I say to myself, even though it probably looks like I got my shirt from the children’s section of H&M. Whatever.

In the few minutes that I’ve been standing here quietly judging the guy in front of me, the line has moved maybe a few inches. The family in front of us is taking forever to order, and apparently they’re going to order one of everything on the menu. Their final tally comes up to roughly sixty bucks. Sixty fucking dollars for food at a movie theater…Jesus Christ, what kind of society do we live in where that’s even remotely okay?

The future seems dark and relatively hopeless. The line isn’t moving and I’m the only pretty person here. Ugh, woe is me. The family in front of us finally walks away with their literal bags of food, and thankfully Paramore-girl and mop-head are only buying a bottle of water. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m on my way to reaching the paradise of the theater seats. So it seemed, anyway, until one of the children to my right decides to start kicking and screaming for no reason.

This child is screaming its goddamn head off, and per my grumpy being I hang my head in annoyance. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I mutter, “Would you mind shutting that kid up?”

Everyone’s staring, needless to say. The child’s mother is mortified and failing miserably at trying to quiet her daughter. No one wants to help, and the only thing the woman behind me can say is “Aww, poor kid.” Poor kid? Poor kid? You’re joking, right? I’m the one that has to suffer through this screaming. Poor me.

And then it happens. Christ himself descends from the sky and kneels down in front of the child, palms resting gently on her shoulders. He looks deeply into her eyes and says, “Be still, my child. All is right.” Jesus then reaches into his robes and pulls out a box of Buncha Crunch, offering the candy up to the child as a peace offering. The child, in awe of what just happened, takes the candy in utter glee and wraps her arms around her savior. “Thank you, Jesus! I love you!”

The son of God then spreads his arms, hands open and palms up, looks to the sky, and departs for Heaven. A warm glow surrounds the theater, and everyone begins to applaud. “Christ is risen!” shouts one woman, followed by another man shouting “Praise be to Him!”

…

Okay, so maybe Jesus didn’t actually descend from Heaven to hush the crying child, but a man did kneel down to her to make an attempt at quieting her.

The man, dressed in a blue t-shirt emblazoned with the image of Pac-Man, steps toward the child and rests his palms on her shoulders. The little girl is mortified. Her crying has ceased and now, I’m sure, she just wants to know why the fuck this weird old man is touching her. He leans in close and says, “You think you have it bad now?”

“You’ve got it easy kid. Save those tears for later. You haven’t had your heart broken yet, you don’t have student loans to take out, you aren’t dying, and you’re about to see a movie. Things could be worse.”

The girl, still staring at the man blankly, asks “How?”

So the guy sits down and crosses his legs and tells the girl flat out, “We all die someday. I’m going to die, you’re going to die…why cry over candy? Why waste the tears? Save them for what really matters. Save those tears for when you’re drowning in debt and you don’t know how you’re going to make rent.”

By now the girl is totally silent, and has her arm wrapped around her mother’s leg. The man stands up, and people actually start clapping. The woman behind me says to him, “If you’re not a teacher, you should be.” He nods, chuckles, and says thank you. He’s proud of himself, and apparently proud of his grim little diatribe.

I’m fucking mortified though. His discussion of reality now has me thinking about my eventual death and the fact that I, too, have student loans to pay back.

Another woman, who didn’t hear the man’s speech, asks “What did you tell her?”

He smiles, leans in — this dude has a hard-on for leaning, I swear it — and says, “I just told her about how awful life can be. She doesn’t understand concepts like death and debt right now, but one day she will and she’ll realize that crying over candy is so totally inane.” There’s intelligence in his reasoning, and I see his point. I still wonder why the hell he would say that to a child instead of something lighter. Maybe this guy had issues of his own, right?

This man is the hero today, and I feel like the villain. He helped and I just quietly complained. He was relatively selfless in his attempts to quell the little girl’s cries, and I just wanted to tell the girl to shut up. Good and evil, I think, light and dark. He may not be Jesus, and he may not even be a teacher…but maybe he should be.

CK

I knew her briefly, and for that I am grateful. Years ago – it was my senior year of high school – I had the chance to interview her for a spot on a school-related group. Unlike a lot of the other candidates, she appeared to be laid back. They were all humorous in their own way, but she had a way with making light of a situation, not just bringing light to it.

Everyone that had the pleasure of interacting with her might say that her happiness was infectious — they would be correct. A smile here or a “Hey!” there, and a surge of energy – happiness beyond what you may have already felt – consumed you.

I was in New Mexico when it happened, probably 200 miles away. It wasn’t until the day after the incident when I actually heard about it. Like a lot of other people, I woke up and checked Facebook first thing in the morning, expecting announcements of pregnant classmates and pictures from parties – the usual things I see.

Instead, my front page was flooded with statements of utter disbelief and overwhelming sadness. After trying to figure out who had passed – and how – I came across a brief news article about a hiker that had died after falling from an outcropping.

This is nothing new to me. As a rock climber, too often do I read stories about hikers and climbers dying or being critically injured after falling from great heights…but this instance hit me differently. This person, this brilliant girl that I and so many others had known – even briefly, even for just a few months – was now the victim. It’s a different kind of shock.

I think what hit me most was the sadness of all of my friends, people that knew her better and longer than I did. Their heartbreak was the most difficult thing for me to see and read and hear.

From what I know about her, from the things that other people have said about her, she was a true beacon of light. For many – most, even – she still is. I won’t pretend to know every detail about her, and I won’t pretend that I was closer to her than I really was. A couple of months, but the impact remains.

I know that she aspired to make people happy. I know that her smile was infectious. I know that she was loved by many of my friends. I know that she was vastly creative. I know what I need to know, and I know that she is and will continue to be missed dearly by everyone that had the good fortune of being around her.

Her light – her memory and her very being – is not lost. I think it’s safe to say that those of us lucky enough to have known her will do our best to carry on her mission of making the world a better place.

Here’s to you.

The Smoker

She sits alone under the carport, a shield from the downpour that surrounds her. She’s older, but not elderly, and “slightly overweight” – something she says her recent back surgery caused. I’ve talked to her once before, and she explained that the pool gave her relief from her pains, both physical and emotional.

“Floating supports my back,” she told me, “and going under keeps everything in my head quiet.”

A couple of months ago she told me about her mental state and how her ex-husband had pushed her to driving a shard of glass into his stomach. He survived, and she was left with a scar in her palm (she held her hand up to show me – there was no scar). Psychiatrists had prescribed her a number of pills to take daily, but according to her they’re doing more harm than good. She says they add voices, rather than remove them. Her family is the root of her problem, she tells me, “The bane of her very existence” — having cut her off from grandchildren and financial support. She now lives with her daughter and grandson – the only two people that haven’t yet abandoned her. She explains that were it not for them, she would not be alive today.

She once told me that this, her current existence, is hell.

She sits under the carport smoking one cigarette after another after another. Even from my spot, some twenty feet away, she appears blank. Maybe it’s the gloomy weather, but she seems more depressed than usual today. On occasion I’ll see her outside smoking, usually standing and pacing – today she’s sitting in a purple lawn chair, staring into the many thousands of raindrops falling in front of her.

Four cigarettes, and she consumes each one down to the butt. Hot orange tip after hot orange tip.

After she finishes her last cigarette, she reaches for another but the box is empty. She sets it back down on the little square table to her left side, and proceeds to dump the ashes into the little patch of grass that would – I suppose – be called her front lawn. It’s no larger than three feet wide by five feet long.

Even without cigarettes, she remains seated for the next ten minutes, staring idly into the rain. When she attempts to breathe in, her first real breath I’ve seen while watching her, she coughs. Hard enough to make her bend over and hold her chest, but not hard enough to make her go inside. I rarely see her outside, so I’m not sure if the cigarettes are what’s killing her or if, ironically, it’s the fresh air.