I’ve never been one to complain, and I don’t like people who do. I mean, of course there are times when it’s unavoidable. Things happen and you have to either vent or try to affect some kind of change, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Just getting around from day to day has plenty of challenges. Obstacles. Issues. Complaining about these things is, basically, complaining about life itself. For some people, that kind of complaining becomes a habit.
I can’t stand that in someone.
In all honesty, I try not to even complain about the major things. For example, here’s a big one, and fairly recent.
About six months ago, I was sitting at a stop sign, waiting to turn right. I had just paid off my car the month before. A car was behind me, also waiting. The cross street was a four-lane with a grass median and a speed limit of 45 miles per hour, but people tended to speed there so I knew from experience that you had to make sure you had a good gap. A woman was waiting to turn left onto the street I was on, and a truck was coming up the hill from my left, going pretty fast. Just as the truck crested the hill, the woman pulled out directly in front of it. I don’t know what was going on in her mind, maybe she just flaked out or misjudged the speed of the truck. The truck rammed into her car and both of them plowed into my car, skidding it sideways to the right a good twelve feet. Quite an impact, really. My airbag deployed and my car was sort of folded at the driver’s side door. My head hit the door window hard enough to put a big star pattern into it, and the impact pushed me into the center console. I was certain I was hurt, but I didn’t know how badly.
The guy in the car behind me ran to my car and looked in, but then immediately ran to the two other cars. I could understand, of course. The truck had hit the woman’s car pretty much dead-on. I’m sure there were people who needed more help than I did. I didn’t hold it against him.
I don’t seek out opportunities to be offended. People do that, you know? They go out of their way to look for things to get angry or feel slighted about. I don’t get it.
My driver’s side door was completely crumpled, so I popped my seatbelt and scooted over to the passenger side. That door wouldn’t open either, but the window had been open. I crawled out and stood on the grass, taking a quick look back at the scene. It was chaotic. Both of the other vehicles were trashed, but the worst damage was to the one belonging to the lady who had caused the accident. Within seconds, I heard sirens.
I wasn’t hurt. Nothing. My head was fine, no cracked ribs, broken bones, nothing. I had been broadsided hard enough to shove my car in on itself, and I had literally walked away without a scratch.
Some people complain about not having enough creamer in their coffee or if the upstairs neighbor has to move furniture around. Yeah, sure, my car was totalled, pretty much destroyed, but I was standing on my own two feet. Who could complain in a situation like that? People were much worse off than I was. The left-turning woman had been hurt badly, and people were already giving her first aid. The truck had been occupied by a small family, and one of the children was screaming, lying on the ground as her mother tried to comfort her. She didn’t appear too badly injured, but who was I to say?
The police and ambulances arrived and went straight to work. Since I was perfectly fine, I didn’t intrude or otherwise bother them.
As the ambulances were starting to load people, the father of the truck family wanted to go with his wife and kids to the hospital. I was just about to ask about what should be done about my damaged car, but he beat me to it. Just as I walked up to one of the policemen, he rushed up.
“I need to go to the hospital with my kid,” he said, “what about the truck?”
“Don’t worry about that,” the policeman replied. “We’ll handle all of that. Just go to the hospital. We’ll contact you.”
Well, there was my answer.
I had thought they would want my information, but the scene was oddly frantic. And when the ambulances left, both of the police cars followed them. For a moment, I had the impulse to trail behind them, saying, “Hello? Excuse me?”
My phone was still in my pocket, so I took it out. The screen was cracked, of course, but I tried to turn it on. No luck. The shattered screen stayed dark.
I lived only about a quarter of a mile away, and since I was feeling ok, I decided to walk. It was a cool spring day, and come to think of it, I had a lot to be grateful for. Yes, I was still experiencing residual shock from the accident, but every single other person in that accident had left in an ambulance. And here I was, walking with a light breeze ruffling my shirt.
I got to my apartment and let myself in. It was almost weird to me how normal everything seemed. How utterly prosaic. My tv set, my sofa. Just my normal everyday stuff. Same as it ever was. I can’t describe what i was feeling. I guess some part of me had expected some kind of change after something that arresting and epic had taken place. But no, just my plain little place.
I was supposed to be at work in a couple of hours, so I used my land line to call in. Went to the manager’s voicemail, so I left him a message explaining what had happened and that I would take a day or two off. It occurred to me that I had heard somewhere that soft tissue damage can take time to manifest, and I thought it might be best to rest.
I took a shower and propped myself up on the sofa. All of a sudden I felt exhausted. The adrenaline was wearing off, and I just felt depleted. As I dozed off, I thought about my father. It was from his negative example that I had developed my policy of not griping about everything. He was just so incredibly negative.. Even as a child, I knew I didn’t want to grow up like him. A day like the one I’d just had would have left him fuming. Probably planning to sue someone, anyone. A hundred phone calls. Fake whiplash. Who knows? Just thinking about it made me even more tired.
I woke up fuzzy and confused. It was dark, and I had no idea how long I had been asleep. I’ve always been the kind of person who flips and flops in bed, but I noticed that I was in the exact same position I’d been in when I fell asleep. One leg straight out and the other propped on the back cushion. As a longtime fighter of sleep, it felt good to have actually rested.
I sat up on the sofa and looked around the room. For a moment, I was completely disoriented. (I almost always am when I wake up from a long sleep.) But this was different.
When I had fallen asleep, the sofa had been on the south wall, with my 40 inch television opposite. Now, the sofa was against the north wall. I was sure of it. I could tell by the angle of the building’s security lights through the slats of the window blinds.
It was alarming. Disconcerting. I looked across the room and stared stupidly at the darkened television.
My TV stand was gone, and the flatscreen I saw was not only much larger than I remembered, but mounted on the wall. It seemed to hover. That was completely, completely wrong.
The carpet. The carpet was wrong, too.
My carpet was a heel-flattened tan shag. But this was different. This carpet was a tuck-and-rolled Berber. Dark and brindled. I could see that even in the limited light available. I sat up and shook my head.
I was still dreaming. Although I couldn’t remember any dreams. But that didn’t matter because this was definitely a dream.
I stood up and walked to the kitchen, and that was when it struck me: I didn’t need to pee.
Even if I’ve only slept for an hour, I always need to pee when I wake up. And I knew for a fact that I’d slept a lot longer than an hour. So yeah, that was weird.
I opened the refrigerator and that was when things went from slightly strange to something else entirely, because two things happened simultaneously. Two things that had nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
The fridge was literally crammed with food. I lived alone and I ate out virtually every meal. I kept some condiments, maybe some milk, a six-pack.
This looked like my mother’s refrigerator. Milk, eggs, lettuce, orange juice, meats. It was packed to the brim.
This was the wrong thing, the first really wrong thing, that made me realize that I wasn’t dreaming. That I was awake and that this was really happening.
The other thing?
A baby began to cry.
Eddie Vasquez is actually a really good guy. He works hard and he takes care of his little family. When he’s home alone, he doesn’t surf porn or chat up girls online. He and I sit on the sofa and watch the kind of movies he likes. When Valerie isn’t home we watch Die Hard With A Vengeance and Apocalypse Now and Scarface. When she is home, we watch Family Guy and Key & Peele.
Valerie loves comedies. But mostly short-form, tv comedy. Anything longer and she falls asleep halfway through.
But that’s understandable. She’s breastfeeding. She says it really takes it out of you.
I don’t mind all this. The Vasquez family are sweet and caring. I stay out of their way as much as I can. The baby, Esme, is a little butterball and she giggles at anything and everything. I’m about half in love with that baby.
Esme is four now, and Valerie is big with Eddie Junior. Big Eddie, as she’s already calling him, says they’ll need a bigger place soon.
Sometimes I walk around. Day or night, doesn’t matter. Things seem brighter during the day and darker at night now. Sunshine seems to go through you somehow, and shadows are lovely and long.
I wonder what that’s about?
I walk everywhere. Days and nights are sort of the same anymore, so my perception of time is kind of off, but that’s a blessing, if you ask me. The turns of the world and the goings and doings of everyone around me are oddly pleasing. I’m outside of it and smack dab in the middle of it at the same time. Years ago, a friend of mine gave me a small capsule of MDMA. The kids call it X.
This is kind of like that. You’re here, but you’re not.
It’s nice, actually.
I walked by the scene of my accident not long ago. Seem like a million years, but the grass still hasn’t grown back yet. Not properly, anyway. There’s still a trough where my wheel rims furrowed up the soil. The grass is starting to grow over the little hummock I inadvertently created as the other cars jammed me to the side. I like that. Maybe they’ll never fix it. That makes me happy, in a weird way. Something I can come back to. Something to visit.
I do have my sad moments, but they don’t last long. I’ll miss Eddie and Valerie and Esme. I could follow them where they go next, but there’s something about that that I don’t like. Feels weird and stalkerish somehow. It’s enough to know that they’re going ahead, making a life for themselves. Esme is going to break hearts someday.
They told me growing up that you would be reunited, but that’s not what I know now. I’m alone, but I am around people all the time. I hear them and see them and then they’re gone, on to their things, their tasks, their shopping, their whatever. They pass through me and I can feel them. Like waves.
David is a gamer. I sit beside him on his black futon couch and watch him kill aliens and terrorists and such. He wears a headset and talks to people online while doing so. They all really seem to enjoy it.
The other day (night?) he spilled an entire 2-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper on the Berber carpet. He cursed and grabbed a towel to sop it up. But, like any average guy, he didn’t do a very thorough job. It has dried now, but you can still see where it happened if you look at it right.
When David leaves, they’re going to have to put in new carpet.
I don’t really want to do anything, and that’s ok. I don’t have to. Nothing is pulling me in any direction. I just kind of hang around, for lack of a better term. There’s nothing wrong or bad about it. Sometimes I think about things I used to like to do. Things like sex. Things like eating delicious food. Getting high or drunk. But I don’t miss those things, I just remember them. I’m just kind of here.
Does that make sense?
Everything is different now. More different than I could have imagined it. I mean, it’s the same, and I mean exactly the same, but it’s different somehow. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s just different. This same stuff is just different.
David has a girlfriend now. Her name is Cassie. She’s short and blond and perky-chubby and they have a LOT of sex. He hardly plays his video games anymore. I don’t go in the bedroom to watch, if that’s what you’re thinking. And if they start in the living room, I go to the bedroom and wait. I don’t think that makes me a better person or anything, it’s just my natural reaction.
It’s weird to be able to feel the sensation of wanting something but not caring if you don’t have it at the same time. When I hear them, I want what they have. I want all the things. All the things. But I don’t care if that want isn’t fulfilled.
But I don’t complain. I’ve never been one to complain.
And I don’t like people who do.
Submitted August 29, 2016 at 08:02PM by mckinney4string http://ift.tt/2c2HceF nosleep
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