friendship
C.S Lewis got it right: friendship is born when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one!"
The Streets of Paris
A few Christmases ago, when in Paris, I happened to become friends with a homeless gentleman who frequented the corner at the end of my street. He sat upon a shocking pink suitcase with his little dog, Lucky, curled up at his feet and wished everyone who passed by a heartfelt “bonne journée.” He never asked for money. Not once. He never scorned those who scoffed or worse judged. He simply smiled and addressed every passerby with a sincere greeting of goodwill. I’d been warned repeatedly about beggars in Paris. “Charlatans,” people said, “they’ll take everything you own if you let them.” So, when I first encountered Nichola, I hurried by shunning eye contact and willing myself NOT to look at the dog. I can turn a blind eye like the rest of us to things too uncomfortable to deal with and reasoned that since this was my first visit to Europe, I deserved a break from routine considerations. But no matter how much I wished I could ignore them, they were always there, as constant as the Eiffel Tower. After a few days, it became impossible, and frankly tiresome, avoiding him. On the fourth night of my stay, I happened to be returning from a concert at the Chapel in Versailles. Intoxicated by the music of Faure, I was in a particularly good mood when I noticed Nichola and Lucky asleep on the street. It was cold that night and a light wet snow had fallen so they were huddled on a grate for warmth upon the wet pavement. My heart cracked. I made my way to the apartment I was staying in around the corner on Duvivier and laying on my bed, stared at the ceiling unable to sleep. I had no idea how I could help or what comfort I could offer, but pretending they didn’t exist was now impossible.
By Lezlie Wade5 years ago in Humans
Into the light
I’m in the gray. Gone are the colors and sounds of life. Gone are all the trappings of the living. My world is now limited to tints of darkness and cold. My whole universe locked in the confines of school bus 401. As always, I sit in the back. Alone. The gray makes me sad. Or maybe my sadness makes the gray. I don’t really know.
By Sébastien Larabée5 years ago in Humans
The Kindness of Strangers
As with a lot of good stories, they can either begin with or end with heart break, this one begins with it. I had thought I found the love of my life, we met online on an app through mutual friends off a broadcasting app. When ever we get tired of entertaining or need to get back to life but want to have company to do whatever life chore we are going to accomplish we switch to a group app so we can come and go as we need to and can speak freely without worry of offending our audience. The guy was from Portland, Oregon, even though it is only 16 hours away from where I live in Canada I had never been down there, and it was somewhere I had wanted to visit for numerous reasons. I had been planning a trip to Texas, but it had fallen through so I was looking for somewhere to go. I have friends from the app who were wanting to meet me for quite some time so I planned a route that would see me through Idaho, Washington state and Oregon before coming home the long way through British Columbia. We had been friends for 6 months leading up to me planning this trip and there was not really any flirting or talk about relationships other than the odd discussion about what we looked for in them but being from different countries it did not cross our minds that we would find ourselves drawn to each other aside from the friendship we had developed. When I told him about my plan and route, I wanted to take he told me he would love to show me around the Portland area and that he had no problems with me staying at his place while I was down there so away, I went. From that first visit he had my heart in a way I never thought possible and we came up with every way to spend time together as much as possible with the border in our way. For the better part of year, I spent my time down there with him, went back and forth every month for a week or two at a time until September when I started school and was going to spend six months with him to help him stay motivated to get his bills caught up and get his passport so he could come to Canada with me and make it easier to be together without being able to move to either country for the time being. It was three months in that everything changed and where I truly learned about the kindness of strangers. Being from another Country I was not aloud to work without permission and a visa, and with Trump being in office most places had stopped trying to hire out of country because it was nearly impossible to get approval plus it is an expensive process that is the responsibility of the company to pay if they are hiring immigrants. I was doing my best to do chores and house keeping to make a few dollars to help how ever I could, make sure I had gas in my car and food to eat while we were trying to get his life in order with his money. My car was not running properly so I was trying to save to get it fixed for when I had to head home, and I was doing some cash night work putting inserts into newspapers. It was doing this that I met the first person that went out of their way to help me. One week after I met this lady, we will call her Dina, is when my world came crashing down and I was left with no where to go, no money and my car not running well enough to get me home. It was the middle of the night and he thought I was sleeping, I was laying quietly watching him play a game on his phone and when I seen what he said to a girl he was talking to my heart broke and I walked out the door, never to look back.
By Lora Danielson5 years ago in Humans
Distant Lights
It was early in the evening. The sun had set behind the horizon and made the sky glow. Night crawled across overhead from the opposite direction. I hesitated in front of Jerry’s tiny shack of a house. A muffled murmur of several voices at once could be heard from outside. The rest of the street was quiet. The occasional stray car passing by illuminated the darkened neighborhood and broke the silence for a moment. Everyone living nearby would have been long finished with dinner and thinking of sleep at this hour. An anxiety gripped my innards and twisted them into a knot. I was suddenly trembling from an unknown cold, despite it being the middle of summer and sweating buckets earlier in the day. Fuck it. I decided to go in.
By Alex Barry5 years ago in Humans
CLUB 140
When Jake and I met it was during the night of Hurricane Sandy at Rutgers University. My dorm, Demarest, was the oldest building on Bishop Beach and wasn't equipped by code to keep us there through the storm. So the Demarites moved in the middle of the hurricane to Clothier Hall, dorm and home of Res-Life offices, where some of the other dorms took refuge, as well. When we got to Clothier, we took refuge in several different places in this ten-floor building. I started taking refuge in the dark and cold main lounge full of other Sandy-refugees before a couple of us decided to walk around the building for a bit. So we walked around the building and ended up stationing ourselves on the eighth floor, I believe, in this narrow hallway. The others were complaining about having to sleep on the floor of another dorm rather than sleeping in their beds at Demarest or at their homes. I, on the other hand, was down for the adventure and was excited to see how things would go down, but I grew tiresome of hearing a bunch of bitching children complaining. We are knee-deep in our conversation when this tall and slender white guy named Jake found us hanging out in the hallway. As he checked on us to make sure we were okay, I remember seeing the army-camouflage pants and a greenish-brown T-shirt and buzz-cut and thinking to myself, "Here's goes our hero!". Are you guys okay here?", Jake asked catching the tail-end of our conversation. Everyone suggests that they are cool and everything is okay. "You sure? Need extra blankets or anything?", He insists. Everyone, including myself, say that we're okay. Then he sat and hung out with us. It was getting late and we were getting loud while everyone else was trying to sleep. So Jake advised that we go to his room to chill. He even mentioned that his roommate had gone home and he had an extra bed. Of all the bitching and moaning everyone was doing, no one wanted to take the spare bed but me. Or, at least, I didn't really give anyone else a chance to change their mind! It was the beginning of a very good friendship.
By AR Terique5 years ago in Humans
Don’t Be the Friend Who Is Always Late
We all have that one friend. The one who makes you wait alone at the restaurant. The one who is late for the movie. The one who says she’ll be ready at 7:00, you go to pick her up, only to wait for her another 40 minutes. You know, the one you love dearly, yet, she has no consideration for your time or anyone else’s.
By Jessica Lynn5 years ago in Humans
