1. We played soccer in the neighborhood park until the sun went down
and the street lights came on. We still had to do the last bit of the
party, the birthday cake, so the end of the game snapped into a race
back to my friend’s house. He was wearing two shirts that night, and he
had taken off the outer one during the game. At the thrill of the race,
he forgot his t-shirt (running was his favorite thing), so I picked it
up. It was damp, a mix of sweat and the night chill, and maybe gross.
(Probably gross, actually, but that sort of thing didn’t bother me.) I
sprinted after the group, found him outside the kitchen door, and handed
him his shirt with a simple “You forgot this at the park.” He glanced
at the shirt, as if for a moment he didn’t remember it was his, and then
took it with a smile. “Thanks.” That turned to a frown. “Ah, it’s
sweaty and that’s gross. I’m sorry. You didn’t have to–” I said, “No,
it’s fine–” but he was already in the kitchen, maybe too embarrassed to
stay?
2. When my grandfather passed away, everyone was at his house. His
wife, all of his children, all of his grandchildren, and the priest. My
grandfather was sick for a while, and we knew it was just a matter of
time, and then it was that time. Almost everyone was crying, everyone
was passing tissues, and from the other room, I watched the priest go
over to my dad. There were whispers and quiet noises in the house, but I
could hear the priest perfectly fine. “Why isn’t she crying? She knows
it’s okay to be sad, right? That it’s normal to grieve and to show that
with tears.” I was sad that night but I didn’t say anything because for
me, tears are wired to anger, not grief.
3. In high school, my freshman English teacher was really good at
playing to people’s learning styles and personalities. Sometimes, he’d
ask us to have a classroom discussion and besides talking, we had to
write down our responses. Then he collected our papers so he could see
how we were thinking, even if we didn’t say anything in class. He wrote
nice comments on mine and on the third one, he added a quote from Ralph
Waldo Emerson: “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected
thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” I had
excellent ideas to add to the discussion, but he couldn’t figure out why
I didn’t raise my hand and share with the class. During my college
freshman seminar, my professor wrote the same quote on one of my essays.
By that time, I figured out what was happening: I couldn’t sync with
the flow of the discussion. I thought of things too early or too late to
make sense with what everyone else was saying, so I didn’t say anything
at all.
4. “No, seriously, I want to marry a pastor some day.” I had known
this girl for two days and she was telling me about her marriage plans.
And expecting me to be excited for her. “Do you think there’s a club?”
“Sorry?” I said.
“A club for girls that want to be pastors’ wives. Maybe I’ll start a Facebook group!”
5. My friend Alicia graduated from high school a year early. On one
of the last days of junior year, we were hanging out after school and
she asked me to write in her yearbook. I’d see all of my friends again
in the fall, but Alicia was going away to college, so for her, this was
the last yearbook. I’m not a nosy person but I glanced over the other
well wishes and goodbyes written by our classmates. I wrote my note,
signed it, smiled, and handed the book back to her. It wasn’t goodbye
for us yet—we would see each other over the summer—but the yearbook
signing felt official, ceremonial.
“Did you see what Dave wrote?”
I shook my head.
She flipped a few pages into the yearbook, pulled out a folded piece
of paper, and handed it to me. Dave had written an entire page. I looked
at Alicia for a moment. Was it okay to read the whole thing?
She nodded. “Yeah, read it.”
Dave was a mutual friend and I knew that he was a very private
person. He and Alicia were close friends but I still didn’t expect him
to write a letter like that. He thanked her for being such a great
friend, for being there to talk, to listen, to help him when he needed
advice or to vent. He said he would miss her and he hoped he could find a
way to visit her at college. He wasn’t sure what senior year would be
like without her, if he could find another friend to be what he needed.
He had opened up to Alicia and he was afraid of shutting himself in
again.
I handed the letter back to her and whispered, “Wow.”
“Yeah, I know.” She tucked the letter back into the yearbook.
“Listen, will you look out for him next year? He’s going to need
someone.”
And I only nodded because I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t know if I
could help him. I didn’t know how I could be that friend for him.
6. I went to a liberal arts college that required every student to
take classes in every discipline, regardless of your major. The one I
didn’t want to take was history, but I got it over with during my
sophomore year. Near the end of the semester, I passed my professor in
the hallway and he asked if I had considered majoring in history. I
shook my head and said something about already settling on my major
because I couldn’t tell a history professor who’s standing in the
history department that history is my least favorite subject.
7. “So which movie do you guys wanna watch?” It was movie night at my
friend’s house, and the great thing was, she essentially had a library
of DVDs in her house. For the most part, I’m not picky about movies so I
let everyone else say if they felt like watching comedy or action,
fantasy or drama. I commented on the movies I had already seen, but I
didn’t say anything to steer the discussion. An hour later, we were
still trying to pick one movie and I wished I had set up voting or some
process of elimination from the beginning.