Today is the 26th of April and someone told me it was 95 degrees outside. Of course, it wasn't -- but that is how this person felt. Of course, this bouncing ball of radioactive heat is about 200 pounds overweight and was sweating like a whore in church. Nice. So, it wasn't really 95 but that really isn't the point. It was hotter today than it was yesterday -- which was itself hotter than the day before. We have not yet adjusted -- we need some transition time. The fact is, we can put up with just about anything given enough time to get used to it. And time must be filled with something other than just complaining, eating, looking at pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal and pooping. This human oven, even 200 pounds overweight, was just trying to make conversation, make a connection, person to person and, to be honest, once I got over my own shit about what he looked like and how his pink shirt was sticking to his ample and supple skin, I really appreciated his trying. Frankly, I appreciated talking to him. It is so easy to ignore those around us. We interact with so many people in impersonal ways -- telephone, computer, text, facebook, twitter -- whatever -- but the good old fashion face to face encounter is quite refreshing. It can be, in its own way, altering, not in a big, I-just-graduated-from-law-school-and-will-soon-make-a-lot-of-money way. But, in a smaller yet no less important way. If I let my own inhibitions and biases go, this guy was no more or less a person than those dear people around me whom I love. I just did not know him so it was easy to objectify him as a fatso. He could, if I allowed it to happen, be a positive influence on the definition of who I am -- not just a binary equation that pulses its way over the ethernet and is then forgotten. But, really, as a person, he made me smile, made me forget the stack of checks on my desk and lightened my day in a small way. Sometimes that is all it takes. So, today, on what is now the 12th day of the rest of my life, in the hot summer heat of late April, I remembered that people are people and that I should at the very least not fill the moat around my heart to keep them away. I should let people get as close as circumstances permit. I should smile. I should enjoy them and let them enjoy me. Because, when I am dead and gone, they will not remember the short, fat, dark haired Greek-American who was self-centered and self-absorbed and who has a big belly and a little bit of cheese above my left front tooth. But they will remember a really nice person who smiled. And, you know, that alone is a nice reason to survive the heat and enjoy something -- anything. Do you really need anything more than that?
So, I will try to lose my insane obsession at trying to make fun of something, of anything, of PEOPLE -- just to get a laugh out of my friends. Because all this does is isolate me and keep me from having real relationships with people who could be . . . nice. Because, looking back, his brief but bright commentary actually was very sweet and light and made the hot day seem just a little bit cooler. To him and to me both I suppose.
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