I would watch from my nest as the Borden truck slowly
backed up to the cafeteria entrance to deliver the milk, as it did every other
day at around 5 P.M. I would watch as the industrial technology teacher closed
the workshop and listen to the bustle of students and teachers moving in and
out of the building, like ants in a colony. They all had places to be and
duties to fulfill. I had duties to fulfill myself, but only one place to be.
That place, for the past two years, was a rejected bench under a pavilion next
to the tennis courts. Against my will, this is where I spent a considerable
portion of my high school years after tennis practices that were held every
other day. The summer before I started high school, my mother opened our food
assembly business, not expecting the rigorous work schedule that was to follow.
My father was only home for two weeks at a time as part of his offshore job on
an oil rig. Naturally, I was not always able to go where I wanted and for those
two weeks that my father was out at sea, I just wanted to come home, to rejoin
the colony. Feeling as if I were watching the world turn from the inside of a shell,
I consumed my time on that bench looking for an escape, ignorant of how a
moment in obscurity could clarify so much.
Waiting to be picked up after a tennis practice or a
piano lesson was not a new thing for me. Both of my parents were hard workers,
and my mother always had some work to finish before coming to get me. However,
the food business was a new ordeal, and my mother, being the manager, had an
obligation to stay until closing time. This time, I was not waiting with my
coach for fifteen minutes, or waiting on a chair inside an air conditioned
building at piano lessons. I was waiting under a shoddy, worn-out pavilion by my
school’s worn-out tennis courts, anywhere between four to six hours after
tennis meetings. So, after practice, I would loiter around the school with my
friends for awhile, pretend like I had a place to go, and then scurry back to
that bench under the roof and set up my makeshift habitat in preparation for
the long wait ahead.
On the first day, I surveyed my surroundings, although I
saw them every day, or at least I thought I did. There were four blue benches
under that roof and a table with the legacy of the school’s tennis history carved
messily into its surface with pens and hairclips. I took a moment to read some
of the messages and then, after quickly looking around, I inconspicuously
chiseled my own lineage into the table. To my left, there was a tree, a
dumpster, and a loud machine that made sure I never fell asleep during my stay.
To my right, there were some bushes in the distance, where I would relieve
myself occasionally, seeing as how the school doors were locked at around 6
P.M. Sometimes the first day is the hardest. But the process was new to me that
day, and I spent most of my time laughing at how ludicrous my circumstances
were. So I sat there, doing my homework and cursing my fate at the same time.
As the stars became apparent, I thought of families sitting around the dinner
table, their faces smiling through a bowl of steaming rice, or lounging around
the television with no socks watching a sitcom. Why did I think of these
things? I almost never had time to watch television and my dinner was usually
fast food as there was never any time to actually cook. Family moments were
rare. In the short time that my parents were together, their rapidly
deteriorating relationship kept them physically and emotionally distant. Yet,
like it is the nature of the mind to magnify any complication, my mind created the
ideal image of home to make me feel even more miserable. Just before I started
to think I was homeless, I saw the light from my mother’s car pierce the
darkness from a distance. As the car came nearer, I heard the sound. The rough,
mechanical sound of the engine was never so smooth, so soothing to my
adolescent conscience.
After that first day, I tried to shut out all of my
surroundings, thinking it was the only way I was going to survive. I filtered
my senses so that I would only look for those liberating headlights, and would
only listen for the familiar sounds of the rusty motor. The car rides home were
relatively quiet, as I tried to appear frustrated to evoke sympathy from my
mother, yet knowing that she could change nothing. Gradually, I drifted into a
grueling routine. After tennis practice, I lingered around on the court as long
as I could, socializing with every kid until their parents had arrived. Shortly
afterwards, I was to be cast into that state of withdrawal, craving human
interaction. The custodians were there with me on most days, moving materials
in and out of a nearby storage room like busy ants. Every day, they were either
hauling large trash bags to the dumpster or cleaning the trash that people did
not bother to pick up after eating their lunches under the pavilion. I might
have tried communicating with them if I were a more confident Spanish speaker,
but I wasn’t, so I stared straight ahead at my papers laid out in front of me,
pretending to do my math assignment as I furiously punched buttons into my
calculator. Then one evening, as a weary custodian limped about cleaning the
space around me, I felt an air of contrition overcoming me. I strained to look
into her eyes; they were faded, distant. Hours later, I sat in repose, still
tethered to the bench like an ornament, contemplating prior events. I thought
about how uneasy I felt while watching the custodian circling me as she worked
her overtime hours. Her wrinkled brow seemed to tell a story and to hide a sign
of more sprightly times, times as a child who once also played in the sun but
now stood obligated by age and burden to remain in the shade. It was a humbling
story. I was only interrupted by the sound of the car parked next to me;
somehow it had slipped through the darkness unnoticed. Still musing, I almost
forgot to put on my unhappy face as I entered the car. In her hand, my mom held
my favorite drink, a slush, from the shop next to our food business. On her
face, she wore a tired smile. I took the drink from her and squeezed it; heavy
condensation had formed around the plastic and most of the ice had melted. It
was the most satisfying drink I have ever had.
Like fruit tastes bitter after indulging in sweet sodas,
like bitter tea becomes unbearably sweet after eating tart vegetables, that
shared moment in the shade illuminated simple things that I failed to see
before and consequently made them just a little brighter. Hardship is relative,
conceived by the human mind, and since, I have concluded that I have none. I
wanted to thank the custodians that worked excessively to clean the trash that
children were too busy to pick up. I wanted to acknowledge the little black
ants working so hard from beneath me, harvesting the day’s lunch. My mother was
the hardest worker of them all, staying overtime to manage our failing
business, yet still making the commute to pick me up, making sure she had her
happy face on to reassure to me that our life would not change too much through
our recession. As it turned out, not a single word of Spanish was needed to
make use of my time and hands to clean trash off the courts and pavilion for
the two years that followed.
Sometime during the past summer, the courts and pavilion
were bulldozed and cleared in preparation for our new, long-overdue tennis
courts. I know many students were happy to see the broken, worn down courts go.
Able to drive on my own now, I stopped by the courts at night on the way home
to see for myself, but there was nothing to see. The courts were a barren
wasteland. I got out of the car, squeezed through the gap in the gate and
walked onto the field of broken concrete. I hobbled through the rubble like a
insignificant ant, losing my footing occasionally. I rusted there for a moment,
on that lonely wasteland, as broken as the concrete under my feet. I thought
about what I had experienced and what I now had to show. Back at home, I went
straight up to my room after eating my Whataburger sandwich and turned on the
television. I glanced at the clock; 7:40 P.M. and it reflected back to me that
bench, empty now. That lonely ant had matured and crawled out of his broken
shell, eager to lead the world away from cynicism, away from intolerance, into
a brand new colony.
______________________________________________________________________________
This was one of the 3 essays that my son had to write when he applied to Univ. of Texas for admittance. He was 17 years old, and made quite an impression in school..
His teacher wrote on bottom of 1st
page:
What an honor to read—and an
even greater honor to know you
And she added this at the end:
Afshin,
You can send this essay to any
school and know that you will immediately engage your audience--- and they
will never let you go away after they have read it
I cannot thank you enough for
the experience of reading about this amazing human. You are my teacher
هیچ نظری موجود نیست:
ارسال یک نظر