Big Things

(A Photograph of Me and George the Face Puncher)

The other night my parents took my sister and I out for my sister’s birthday. We drove to the eatery my parents like very much called “THE MELT.” On the way there my sister and I played a game with one another where, when one of us is not looking, the other turns on the “SEAT HEAT” button on the other’s seat. It’s a strangely embarrassing feeling, suddenly realizing that your seat has become unexpectedly tepid. It’s as though you’ve just relieved yourself, or maybe like someone has peed your pants for you. To recap:

FANCY HEATED SEAT = UNPLEASANT

What a ridiculous super power for a car to be equipped with. I want car companies to start offering features that accomplish luxuries never before imagined.
1) FOOT-BATH GAS-PEDAL
2) CHOCOLATE-WALNUT-FUDGE DASHBOARD
3) PASSENGER SEAT MADE OF “BOOBS”
4) TRUTH GAS
5) CIGAR SMOKING ANDROID BACKSEAT DRIVER

Anyway, while on our way there, a man in a Subaru tried to cut my father off, so my father sped up considerably; drag racing him like James Dean off the side of a geographical wonder called “DEAD EVIL SKELETON MAN’S HAUNTED GORDGE”. My father flipped the man The Bird, screaming, “FUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUU” and the man in the Subaru reciprocated. He then succeeded in cutting my father off and slamming on his breaks.

It was at this moment that I became very tense. When I feel tension it almost feels biological, like I have some kind of physical aversion to loud and big happenings.
Another example of this occurred today.

Here is a short preamble to this story: “In November I was beaten and robbed in Philadelphia at four in the afternoon. The men were captured and what followed was a long ordeal of continued trials in which I appeared in court only to be told that the court was not yet ready and that I would have to come back later. I didn’t want to go to court really, but I would receive these letters in the mail: YOU ARE ORDERED TO APPEAR IN COURT. NOT APPEARING IN COURT AS YOU WERE ORDERED COULD RESULT IN YOUR IMPRISONMENT AND THE IMPRISONMENT OF ANY CHILDREN YOU MIGHT CONCEIVE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ISSUE OF THIS DOCUMENT.”

Today was the very last day of this whole ordeal and, in this courtroom setting: I started to become very anxious. Nothing was happening, but it was the mere fact that we were sitting in a place where the BIG things happen to people. You know these places. Hospitals, court rooms, junior high schools; there’s something about being in a place like that. The places where people live out their most extreme moments, the moments they will think about every night before bed for the rest of their lives.

During the three hours I was there, only two things happened in the midst of the comings and goings of lawyers and the bloviating of rhetoric and antiquated dialect only spoken now-a-days in a court of law. Two things accomplished by millions of cubic feet of hot air blown around the tiny court room:

1) One man forty-seven year old man plead guilty of drug dealing.
2) The man who punched me in the face pled guilty of punching me in the face. Here is an example of how weird the talking is in a courtroom:

“PUNCH IN THE FACE” = “CONSPIRACY”

The first man, the forty-seven year old man was ushered out, shoved before a microphone and told to answer questions. The man could barely speak English and when the judge insisted he spell his name, he became red-faced and simply said the name again. It was then, at that moment, in that tiny room on the seventh floor of 1301 Filbert Street Philadelphia Pa, that it was decided that this man ought to spend two years in a prison.

I think of what two years means and of myself two years ago, remembering all the things that have changed. It seems that if I were to meet ME from two years ago, I might have to “CONSPIRACY” him in the face. So much can happen in two years! We can learn to walk and talk. We can make two whole babies! We can become morbidly obese or learn conversational Spanish! So many things we can do!

AND: at that moment, while I sat in the courtroom’s cold pews, it was decided that this man who could not spell his own last name would NOT change for two years. The state would go to great lengths, putting him in a tiny room, ensuring that as little growth as possible could occur.

THEN the villain that had been lurking in my day-time-night-mares appeared before my eyes:
I’ve spent the last few months thinking about this man and what a horrible being he must be. “I BET YOU TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS HE’S PROBABLY RAPING SOMEBODY RIGHT NOW,” I’d so often wager to myself. But when he came out, he was just a kid in a t-shirt who talked like a kid. It was strange. Then he stood and apologized. Then he was told to go to prison for one year. Then he stood up and went to prison. And that is where he is right now.
While I was watching big things happen to him, I felt a baffling connection to him; as though I could wake up tomorrow somehow, as if through some miraculous act of gravity, and stand before a gavel-wielding judge, and be sentenced to go live in a prison room. Is it maybe only by some stroke of immense grace from the Almighty that I am allowed to be the person i am being right now? The whole way home my mother talked and talked and talked. I sat in the passenger seat sipping the frozen coffee drink she bought me thinking, again and again, “SO WEIRD. WEIRD, WEIRD, WEIRD.”

(A Photograph of weird, weird thing)