Pablo Vasquez

Wish Note

I Jordan Jackson was a studious young man. He always had been. In fact, the day that he graduated middle school, his family took him to Benihana’s to celebrate the fact that he had received honors and top marks in all of his classes. In traditional Benihana’s style, they were seated with another party. It was a daughter, in her 40s perhaps, and her father, well into his 80s at least. The daughter, noticing Jordan’s cap and gown, struck up a conversation, one which began, as most conversations did at that juncture in his life, with the question “what high school are you going to?” This conversation, inevitably, led to the typical follow up discussion of colleges, upon which the father, barely lucid, interjected, recalling some distant yet temporarily present memory. “You know, I had a friend in high school who went to college. He loved school so much, boy I tell ya. In fact, after college, he went on to get his masters degree… and after his masters, he got his PhD! Actually, he ended up getting two PhDs!” The father paused and laughed to himself. He looked at, and yet somehow through, Jordan. “Yeah, he loved school so much, by the time he finished, he didn’t know what to do. So he killed himself” “Dad!” The daughter was so embarrassed at the abrupt and morbid turn that the conversation took that she offered to pay for the entire meal. Jordan liked that memory. He thought about the father’s friend a lot. In fact, it was this exact memory that had just drifted into his thoughts, occluding his focus like a storm cloud interrupting a beautiful vista view.