Eric and Angel, pt. 1

Today I met two people who reminded me that friendship is what makes life worth living. Their names are Eric and Angel, and I hope someday I see them again -- even if they won't ever be able to see me.

I'd just seen Patrick off to work after our morning walk, during which I'd been lamenting again about how people can be such jerky drivers. It never fails that someone almost mows me down on Wabansia Street even though they have a stop sign AND had just had the same sign a block before (meaning they'd gone from zero to daredevil speed in just a few feet for no good reason other than, I don't know, wasting gas). I was tired from rockin' out last night with the Hidden Mitten -- indeed fairly convinced I'd given myself whiplash thrashing around during the "Meltdown" outro -- but I was dragging my ass to the gym anyway. Another spacey Saturday, waiting for Patrick to get home from work.

And then I saw them: two blind men trying to navigate the bustling, construction-clogged streets of my neighborhood. One was tall and black and lumbering, tapping condo walls and parking meters with his cane. The other was smaller, Hispanic, with curled wrists and a labored gait, the results of some handicap or illness I couldn't place. They linked arms and held onto each other, smiling in the sunlight as they walked, slowly but surely, down my street. Other people whizzed by on their weekend jogs or coffee runs, and as I passed the men in the crosswalk at Wabansia, I heard one say kindly to the other, "We're almost to the Aldi." Apparently, they were going grocery shopping together at the discount store down the way.

I walked half a block in the other direction and had to stop. I know it sounds crazy, but I was trying not to cry. I wish you could have seen these two -- so good to each other, just in a simple act most of us take for granted, walking to the store. I don't know if it was the writer in me or the whole daughter-of-a-social-worker thing, but my heart absolutely ached to know these men's stories. I knew turning around was ridiculous, but there was no way I could go to the stupid gym now. Not by myself, on such a gorgeous day. Not to bop up and down to vapid dance remixes and futilely obsess over those five last mythic pounds every woman wants to lose. Not with my emotional wiring.

I have recently, officially come to embrace my mantra -- that everyone we meet can teach us something, impact us, maybe even change the course of our lives or the world. Of course, it helps that I like to talk to people, and that I believe strongly in following your heart and going with your gut. So I turned around.

(To be contined . . .)