The All Nighter

August 8, 1988:

I opened my eyes and saw him standing at the front door. He wore a long coat and had the longest beard I had seen anyone wear. It was this deep rich color of brown with thundering streaks of silver gray. He looked into Aunt May’s All Nighter Diner with this piercing look of empty. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t sad. It wasn’t hurt. It seemed beyond emotion and absent of it all. He stood at the front door for what felt like 5 mins. His stillness vibrating throughout the entire space. It felt like he had entered the diner and stepped into tranquility. As I missed my mouth, staring directly at him, his stillness granted me my own feeling of peace. I feel like humans rarely wear their truest feelings across their face. But this man, after whatever he had experienced, his serenity with it was apparent. I wondered as I stared, if anyone else was staring. My awareness rose from the man and expanded in the room. I realized no one was making a sound. Everyone was frozen, looking at this man as if he came from another dimension.

I’ve come to this diner since I was 4 years old, when people enter that door, it’s as if you have to say good morning to the entire room. Everyone can see you. All the eyes in the room attract to you as soon as the bell over the door rings. In small towns like ours, if you don’t say hi, we will. It has been this way for years. For strangers, for town folk. It did not matter. For some reason, this man created silence in a place I’d never heard it. Just from standing at the door. When he finally took that first step towards the counter the entire room felt like it had exhaled. Small sounds returned, but it was mostly people adjusting themselves to watch him without “watching him.” He dropped himself on the stool and didn’t look up. He just stared at the counter. He hung his head and dropped his shoulders, as if gravity itself intensified for him. It was ridiculously quiet. When Aunt May approached him to ask how he was, the sound of her voice sent a shock through my system.

“How are ya hun? What’ll it be?”

What ever the man had gone through, it quaked in his voice. Whatever he either did or endured shook through his sound.

“I’m lost.”

Aunt May immediately chimed in,

“Where you lookin to be?”

The man said nothing but slowly lifted his head, meeting eyes with Aunt May. He stared in her eyes and said…

“Everywhere”

His answer took my mind on an eavesdropping journey.

“I have felt myself within the walls of this body for so long. Within the confines of Who I am, and what I do. I have been this story for an entire lifetime. If I decide at any moment to be who I want to be, who ever I was no longer exists. There is no definition of me, you are just whatever you want to be. I could be a butt naked guitar player, or I could drive a bus. I could be a cashier or I could sell knives. Life is made up of choices made. Decisions to become. Made by a creator who enjoys acting as if he is not creating by wearing human suits. Life is whatever you make it! The story of you doing anything you want starts with you doing anything you want… “

He started to rise from his chair…

“When you walk in on your brother having sex with your wife..It’s your decision on whether they both live! The story is in your hands.”

His energy felt familiar when he said the bit about the wife. As if he uttered a comfortable truth.

“You could sit around your whole life, not doing something. Saving it for later. Leaving it for a new day…”


His arms stretched out wide, and he took a deep breath..

“OR WHEN IT IS TIME TO BE YOURSELF, YOU BECOME YOURSELF!”


As if the room was not already silent with the thunder of his voice, after he screamed there were no scapes of forks. There were no sips of cola. Everyone fixed their attention as if he hit a bell that everyone recognized. His arms began to descend slowly. His head dropping in unison.

“People wait a whole lifetime to become themselves. All it takes is a choice. An acceptance. A moment of saying yes to the things you have yelled no to.”

As his hands met his belt, I heard Mrs. Lockland scream. As if she had a premonition of what he planned to do.

In an instant a gun was raised from his coat and he shot a bullet through Aunt May.

Everyone in the diner screamed at once. A choir of panic. He screamed over the harmony…


“Death was introduced to me tonight. How it came to me was through choice.”

The room was scrambling and vocally processing what just happened with a mix of moans and screams. Gun shots in closed quarters make for hard hearing. My body became weak and light as I realized I too had been shot. My attention began to rise from my body and I could see the story of this infamous murder spree playing out in front of my minds eye. Expressing last thoughts I wondered as I watched…

Had I lived my life fully? Had I been my truest self? What choices did I leave on the table? Did I lose this life because I wasn’t using it?

As final thoughts played out in my passing mind, I start to understand my life was exactly like this diner. It was only what I made it. Only what I asked for. Only what I created. Life is constantly creating a sense of novelty in similar settings. We create our destinies. The man created his destiny and I created mine.

I really hope this lessons sticks with me…