Sometimes I Wish We Could Run

I'm not a very good person.

 "Hurry. The. Flipping. Whale. Up."

That's pretty much the language of the subconscious as I travel...walk...ok, slowly slug along the halls each day. I stand in hall blocks that, on the good days, can set me back two or three solid minutes on my commute to lunch. But oh...if I run into a couple. The ones that hold hands and take up half the hallway while somehow still being able to grin like banana-stuffed primates? You might as well consider the tardy bell rung and be just as slow as they are. Because if you bump into one, you come into the wrath of the other.

So I walk a little slower, because my last teacher held me back a minute and now I'm behind a pair. But then something - someone - comes into my path, blocking me from the couple and jumping in front of me with a tap, tap tap! of a stick.

I'm not a good person.

He wears glasses, but he's basically blind. He's feet shorter than me, a girl who needs high heels to catch up with the height of her barefooted friends. His legs are crooked, his walk is slow. And this time I don't mind so much that a couple is in front of me. His teacher walks behind him, guiding him through the chaos. She is the only person in the school who he talks to.

Sometimes I don't see how we can even be called people...

I finally get to lunch, minutes late, and walk quite calmly past the glaring principal. I sit down, knowing the line is monsterous by now, and I spot a girl at the other end of the room. She's laughing and she's batting her lashes at a group of popular girls and boys. She is of the same height as the boy who I met in the hallway. They are not related, and yet, though friends and a holiness of the elite permeates her air, there is also an acknowledged respect. It shines through the scar she bears on her chest, the one which runs down into her shirt. The scar which shows where the doctors' fought to save her life.

...when we treat each other like such dogs.

Like I said at the beginning of this blog, I'm not a good person. I have never made an effort to talk to the boy. I have never taken the time to ask the girl how she was after open-heart surgery. I don't think anyone ever really plans to, if that makes sense. I don't think we set out to. I didn't write these stories side-by-side to show some fault of the boy, some glory in the girl. I wrote it because of something captured in the boy, and yet hidden in the girl. For something that, without his cane, would be invisible in the boy, and yet too apparent in the girl.

Struggle. Pain. Obstacle. Self.

It's like open-heart surgery. It's like being blind. We don't all have scars or glasses, but we all can feel the crunch, the weight, the burdens of our own skin. We do not stop to think of others' pain. We do not stop to think that others' suffer. Or, perhaps we do, but for a moment, and it is so terrible, so great a responsibility, that we turn with indifference and treat all the same. I admit that I ignore. I admit that I choose to be blind. I admit that I put myself above others more times than should be allowed.

And I admit that I have struggles.

And so, put off today, and mentioned tomorrow: I'll be spending each Friday on one of these people. Maybe it'll be someone I know, someone you know, someone we know...or maybe it'll be someone that we both don't know at all. Until then, watch the weekend, drink dry, and sleep soundly.