Once in Boston - as a postdoc, probably 2010 - the narrator was riding downtown, to his job, on a D train, and this dirty, disheveled, confused kid, maybe about 20, maybe less, came up to him and asked for a few dollars. it happened a lot, usually it was to be ignored (once, the narrator gave a guy the snack-for-home bagel out of his coat pocket, and the guy smiled the biggest toothless smile, the narrator's heart sank - those were good bagels, they made your jaw sore!) but this guy was too pathetic. the narrator got out his wallet and gave the kid 5 dollars.
the kid held the bill, stared at it unsteadily, and said deliberately: "you just gave me.. 5 dollars".
yep. so, man. how did this happen? how did you get here?
"ah. yeah. my mom, she got a boyfriend that i didn't get along with too good. so i moved out, i left, when i was 15 (or 16. or something like that)." he mentioned the name of the town - the narrator didn't know it. he trailed off.
some things were unspoken. we don't know the drugs the kid was on, on the street in Boston in 2010. none of the narrator's business.
the narrator said, earnestly, along the lines of (maybe word-for-word) - there's always time. you can always turn it around.
the kid bobbed his head and shuffled off.
it stuck with the narrator. 'there but for the grace of god go I', he'd think. he still thinks. it felt so close. impossible to explain, but in the narrator's mind he and the kid were virtually the same person, different versions of the same.
the grace of god being, a stable home, stable family, parents focused on his future.
what do we learn from this? be someone else? gratitude not to be? shame not to be?
No comments:
Post a Comment