posted
I just finished writing this a minute ago and I just wanted to share. Hope y'all enjoy!
The Food Court
I wasn’t really enjoying my Chick-Fil-A that afternoon. Lately, it had seemed as if I were living the same day again and again. Most days, I would go to work. On my days off, I would maybe go to the mall, or to the bookstore, or to the movies. I would spend way too much time talking about nothing much with people (mainly coworkers) who I knew didn’t measure up to the friends I had made in other places in the past. Even my relationship with my boyfriend was seeming… run-of-the-mill, as I was living my garden-variety life, sitting in my town’s garden-variety mall, eating the same Chick-Fil-A I had eaten a thousand times before.
Was it so long ago that I had graduated from high school, from college, with dreams that were too big for three of me? At what point, moving from job to job, did the last job become exactly the same as the job I had 3 jobs ago? What had happened to the man who was going to make a difference in the world around him? I didn’t know the answer.
“Excuse me, but are you Jeff DeMarco?” I heard a voice come from behind me. I turned in my seat to see a beautiful blonde smiling down at me from a few feet away.
“Do… I know you, miss?” I queried.
The words were hardly out of my mouth when she matter-of-factly replied, “Well, no, not so much. I know you, though, Jeff. Let’s just say… we have a mutual contact point.” She seemed to be enjoying some sort of private joke, as her girl-next-door grin widened just a bit further.
“Like a mutual friend?” I was thoroughly confused, yet intrigued by this girl’s straightforward pluck.
“Not exactly. Uh… do you mind if I sit down?” she asked.
I gestured across the table. “It’s a free country,” I said. She was already in the process of sitting down at the table, as if she had known what my response would be. Another voice came from a few feet away.
“Well, it’s a free country right NOW. It’s a good thing you don’t know what six more years of Bush is going to…”
“GARTH.” The girl glared for a second at the young man who had joined us at the table. He was an unkempt redhead, with freckled good looks and a broad, open smile.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” Garth moved as if to join us at the table. “You’re Jeff DeMarco, right? It’s good to meet you, man. Really good. I’m Garth Ranzz.” We shook hands briefly. “I hope you don’t mind us dropping in on you like this today, but there’s not much time left until…”
“Until what?” I asked the honest-faced Garth, as he sat next to the girl across the table from me.
“Well, I guess that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” He grinned across the table from me.
Still a bit confused, I turned to the girl. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name, miss?”
“Oh.” She turned slightly pink. “Sorry about that. When you don’t need introductions yourself, it’s hard to remember that part. I’m Imra Ardeen.”
Garth started laughing. “I don’t believe you, Imra. All those instructions and guidelines for interaction you made me study back at home and you forget one of the most basic rules of human interaction! That’s pretty good.”
“Shut UP, Garth.” Imra said through her teeth, as she stiffened slightly, reddening a bit more. “Where is Rokk, anyway?”
“Right behind you,” the dark, handsome young man holding a food tray came up to the table. “I had to wait in line for this, uh, food.” He set his tray down next to mine as he sat next to me.
“What is that?” Imra looked critically at the tray.
“I got it at a place called Sbarro’s,” Rokk replied as he eyed the 3 slices of pepperoni. “The man at the counter told me it was good.”
“Looks… interesting.” Imra’s nose wrinkled slightly, but she accepted the piece of pizza Rokk handed her.
“Excuse me, but who are you people?” I demanded. “Here you all are, sitting all around me here in the food court, and you all seem to know me, but you don’t even know what pizza is for God’s sake, and I’m sure I’ve never seen any of you in my life…”
“Well, we do know you, Jeff.” Rokk’s sincere, quiet, and calm face looked back at me underneath his shock of raven hair. “Well, we know OF you, anyway.”
I looked from Rokk to Imra to Garth, trying to make sense of these three lunchtime interlopers, when Imra spoke again. “We just wanted to come and talk to you today, Jeff. We wanted to see how you were doing, and to help you, if we can.”
“Today.” I snorted derisively. “What’s so important about today?”
“It’s SPECIAL.” Imra looked directly at me. “That’s all you really need to know.”
“It’s special,” I mocked her, shaking my head. “It’s a day just like any other day. Nothing much happens around here.”
Garth coughed quietly. “I think what Imra is trying to say is that no day is exactly like any other day. Things happen. We finish what we started the day before and we move on to new things. People leave our lives and new people enter our lives. We—“
Garth was interrupted by a loud bang, followed by half of the lights going out above our heads. “Damn,” I breathed. “ Looks like something blew. Well, the power’s failed, I guess. That’s not something you see in the mall every day.”
“Maybe I can do something to help.” Garth stood up. “I’m pretty good with electricity. Imra, Rokk, you guys can finish up over here, can’t you?” They nodded. “I’ll meet you back at the coordinates, then. Jeff, it was great to meet you.” We three watched as Garth hurried off.
“Making every moment count is something Garth feels very passionately about, especially these days.” Imra continued to look at Garth walking away, smiling wistfully. Finally, she turned back to Rokk and I. “Jeff, we just wanted to tell you that we know what you’re going through. All those feelings that you’re just living your live from day to day, with no direction, no purpose. You think of all the people in your life who have supported and loved you, who have believed in you and your abilities, and how much you have failed them and yourself by not becoming the person you felt you were supposed to become. You’re seeing all the time you have wasted in the past, and uncertain about what the future will hold. And, honestly, you’re letting your past and future paralyze you from acting today and making your life happen right now.”
“That’s amazing.” I looked into Imra’s direct gaze. “How do you understand what I’m going through? And how do you know what I’m feeling today? It’s like you’re reading my mind.”
Imra paused for a second and glanced over at Rokk. “Well, I guess you could call it a gift…”
Rokk interrupted in his quiet way. “We understand what you’re feeling because we’ve all been there, Jeff. I was a success in my field, but I knew somehow that I wasn’t doing what I was meant for. Imra and Garth were the same way. Garth was just drifting, and Imra wasn’t happy in her life either. We were all wasting our potential dreaming about futures that we felt could never happen.”
“So what are you telling me right now? Work harder and all my dreams can be mine?” I shook my head. “I’ve heard all that before.”
“Let me tell you a story, Jeff.” Rokk leaned back in his chair. “Once, there were three young people. No more than kids, really. They were all living their lives as best as they knew how, nothing particularly exciting or interesting happening more than what was on the vidscreen every night. But one day, these three had the opportunity to make a difference. There was a man who was in trouble, and these three kids, for that moment, fulfilled their potential by helping him. They had their opportunity, and they seized it, not because it would make them rich, or change their life, or bring them fulfillment. They did it because it was the right thing to do, and only they could do it. In that moment, they changed their lives from the ordinary to the extraordinary, and nothing was ever the same for them. Ever. All because of that one special moment where they were willing to do what they were born to do. When they were willing to be heroes.”
I looked at the glistening tear forming in Rokk’s eye. I could tell that he believed emphatically in every word he was saying. “But what does this have to do with me?” I asked.
Imra looked up from where she had been meditating quietly. “Jeff, in every moment in your life, you have the choice of whether or not to be a hero. In every second of breath that you take, you can make that choice. Whether it is just hanging out with friends, or spending time with your love, or deciding whether to exercise, or not be late in the morning for work, or to spend time creating and shaping your life rather than allowing your life to shape you, you have the choice of whether or not to be a hero. Your life has the same potential to become absolutely extraordinary as every other life you meet every day, as long as you make right now the very best now it can be.”
Rokk motioned to Imra. “Imra, our time’s almost up. Brainy’s going to be waiting to bring us back.”
Imra and Rokk stood up. “Jeff, I wish I could tell you what’s in store for you, but frankly, if I did, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.” Imra smiled. “Better to let you discover it on your own.”
“It was great to meet you, Jeff.” Rokk grabbed my hand and shook it. “I hope we helped you to feel a bit better about things. Keep up the good work. Don’t miss the opportunities in your life as they come along.”
“Let’s go find Garth and get ourselves back.” Imra shook my hand briefly. And then they left, leaving me to finish my Chick-Fil-A sandwich that suddenly tasted slightly different than the thousand or so I had eaten in the past.
[ July 15, 2003, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: Kid Prime ]
-------------------- White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So... many... possibilities.
From: Birmingham, AL | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Ingenious and heartfelt, Kid, and their advice goes well for all of us. You put a great deal of feeling into that scenario, as well as being attuned to the Legionnaires' styles of expression, and it shows.
From: Starhaven Consulate, City of Angels | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Thanks, everybody, for your kind words. It was a special effort for me, to be sure. Now if I can just implement the lessons I learned from Rokk, Imra, and Garth while writing the piece...
-------------------- White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So... many... possibilities.
From: Birmingham, AL | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Looks like you already did implement their advice by writing that piece. You could have just sat around and thought about it - but here it is, finished, posted and very nicely done indeed.
From: Café Cramer | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Great job KP -- nice to see you're letting those creative juices flowing.
Now I wanna have a chicken fil-a ... hey, waitaminnut! You weren't paid for that product placement were you? Has this all been a subtle ad for Chicken Fil-A??
Come to think of it, what connection do you have to Mattel, Mr. "let's talk about Transformers and whet the public's appetite for the new product launch!!"
(sorry, I just saw "A Beautiful Mind" and some of that paranoia is rubbing off...)
From: New York, NY | Registered: Jul 2003
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Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
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