"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
"When you face a crisis, you know who your true friends are." Magic Johnson When we are young we live our lives thinking that we are invincible: that our fallibility is non-existent, and that we know everything that we will ever need to know about life. In fact, we often don't grow out of that mentality until we are well past the age when people stop listening to us. On May 4th, I injured my knee in a sports accident. In a particularly difficult maneuver, I had come down hard on one leg, twisting it at the knee. With a "pop", my knee caved in from the left, and I hit the ground. I was alone and afraid with nothing but my screaming echoing off of the buildings surrounding the empty parking lot where I lay. Then from the building closest to me, a friend emerged. She asked me if I was okay - the obvious answer being "no" -then left me for a moment to get additional help. She, along with ten other people from that building, and another seven or eight from the next building over, worked to keep me still and as comfortable as possible while they called some of my relatives and an ambulance. Those first ten angels were people from my church. The diagnosis was a torn meniscus and torn anterior cruciate ligament, all in the left knee: an injury only fixed with surgery. I never thought I could hurt myself that badly. I never considered that my injury would restrict my ability to walk, drive, and do things on my own. I couldn't help but feel a little bit cheated. I knew that my injury wasn't permanent and could be fixed with surgery, but it had come at a particularly inconvenient time and would cause me to miss out on an opportunity that I've spent most of my adult life only dreaming of. In times of crisis a community will rally around one of its members, offering aid and companionship. For the next month, from the moment I fell until the day I went into surgery, my church prayed for me, asked constantly after me, called me, and offered their services if I needed anything. The founding pastors of my church, Michael & Connie Smith, built my church on the four principles listed below. 1. "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding (Proverbs 3:13)." 2. "The church must be filled with friends." - Connie M. Smith 3. "Nothing else matters but God," - Michael T. Smith 4. "Value people for who they are and not for what they do." - Michael T. Smith What amazes me every day is how much the people in attendance embody the spirit of these four principles. The love that each and every person there has shown me over the course of the last month has been tremendous.
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A Short Story I belong to him. I’d like to think that my person belongs to me as well, but I know this isn’t so. So often he loses me, and I think to say “here I am,” from underneath the couch where he’s kicked me, or “pick me up,” from my place on top of the kitchen counter. I know I’m only as good as the well of ink inside me, but I don’t mind this. The life of a ballpoint pen is small.
Some days we go to work together. He works as a sushi chef at a little dive bar on the boulevard. He stores me next to two other pens where I am safely nestled on a pocket protector. He uses me to fill orders. Even now, he uses me to write down the total number of tickets for the day. I wish I could tell him that he forgot to carry the zero when he was adding. Fortunately, he catches his mistake. Still, I’m sure that if I had a mouth, he would’ve heard me. On the days we go to work together, we always come home smelling of seaweed and rice wine vinegar. Sometimes, he even stashes some seaweed away to chew on later. Yesterday he used me to sign a check for a kotatsu table **. The total bill was $700. Then he used me again later to sign his name when he received a $200 tea set in the mail. Street food managers don’t spend $900 on tea sets or kotatsu tables. Street food managers buy $30 electric heaters and invest in more blankets and sweaters. Tonight after work, he takes me home and gets ready for a date. His sweater is mud brown with red and seaweed green argyle patterns on the breast. His jeans are crisp and freshly ironed. The doorbell rings. A girl with ivory skin and thick, curly, blond hair waits outside the door. Her skirt is too short and she wears too much makeup. They eat a simple dinner and retire to the bedroom. She emerges an hour later fingering three twenties. I wish I could give him what he needs, but I am only a pen. I am not human. * * * I emerge from the bedroom with my bank register to look for my pen. The pen is on the floor. Its plexi-glass surface is cracked and broken. Seaweed black ink oozes from each crack and collects around every tiny shard. My backpack is nestled next to the kotatsu table. Reaching for it, I pull another pen from my pocket protector. **a kotatsu is a type of table manufactured in Japan with a blanket attached and draped off of the sides, and a heater attached by a mechanism underneath the coverlet. |