John Davidson, a young man in the eyes of many, stepped into a local restaurant escaping a hot and stagnant afternoon. The air inside the restaurant was cool and soft, as ceiling fans chopped away overhead. Apart from the bartender and a couple tenants, the restaurant was empty.
Stepping into this space, John eyed a seat at the far end of the bar and sat down across from a large television. The television was one of five, lining the dimly lit back wall of the bar. Underneath these televisions sat an assortment of liquors, on shelves of varying heights. Each bottle of liquor was filled to a different level, and many of the bottles had a little spigot on the top. The bar itself was made out of a laminated rock, reminiscent of marble but ultimately closer to coriander. For most tenants, this detail did not matter one way or another. What mattered was that it was a smooth surface to drink from or to lie on in the midst of life’s woes. It was a companion of sorts, and no one really minded what it was. In any case, John’s mind was elsewhere. That is to say, John's mind was far away from the bar, imagining what retirement might be like. As John sat at the bar in a sort of waking dream, a woman took a seat at the bar a few feet from John. The woman, a small but talkative individual, wasted no time in making herself known. She spoke suddenly and without warning, jarring John from his dream state and causing him to look strangely at this new tenant of the bar. The woman to John’s right was a small built person, as noted earlier, with long, well-kept hair, and the clothes of someone of means. She could have been John’s mother, had John been born with paler skin and a fair complexion. Alas, he had never met her before, but that did not stop her from intruding on his imagined space. With the sound of football emanating from the televisions overhead, the woman began a conversation with John. It started slowly with talk of the football game and with talk of the weather. It then grew into the sort of conversation that a person might find odd in another circumstance. That is to say, the conversation went from small talk to therapy talk very quickly, and John soon found himself playing the part of a therapist. The woman spoke about her woes and life journey, as John nodded and listened as best as he could. It was hardly the lunch he expected to have, but John listened to the woman all the same. As they ordered food and ate lunch, the woman told John all the things a therapist might expect to hear, while John did his best to be attentive. At the end of lunch, John paid for his meal, thanked the woman for the discussion and left the restaurant. The air outside was still thick with heat as he left, but for some reason John’s mind was far and away from the present circumstance. As he stepped into his car and drove away, John thought long and hard about what had just happened. In the aftermath he determined that there was one thing to take away from all of this. Said one thing is as follows: all people, loud or quiet, big or small, desperately need someone to talk to. Comments are closed.
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Blog
Welcome to the blog! I've republished some of my favorite entries from previous blogs (found in the archives) and I am constantly creating new content for this section. As with the rest of this website, I hope you enjoy reading and exploring the many ventures I am undertaking. Thanks for stopping by! - Chris Archives
July 2024
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