It was nil, nil; Ecuador, Brazil twenty-one minutes in as we sat in affordable chairs at a table covered in linen and then clear plastic, walls held up by three framed pictures; one of them a naked woman kneeling in supplication before a clay pot full of various white flowers; if that's not indicative of what's been going on, I don't know what is. So that last part wasn't true, it wasn't how things were. Things have been fine. Better than they had been, but I'll return to the story. Brazil had just earned their first of many yellow cards, not long after Ecuador's in the overly physical futbol match. I looked over, "Dude sold it. Don't know if that was worth a yellow card." They showed the replay, continuing in Spanish as with the conversations surrounding us; it was definitely worth a yellow card.
Jon turned around to check on our waitress/cashier/greeter's current status as she walked back from the kitchen. Light eyes, light hair, dark skin. "I'm...getting pretty hungry," he rotated his body in the chair, looking back at me looking at the mounted TV. "Yes...Nice slide. All ball." Then my phone buzzed and I didn't recognize the number, so I walked across the room to take it. Turns out some of the people I went to school with were having a reunion, of sorts, in Decatur and they wanted me to drive down to party with them. I shifted on my non-braced knee and responded that I probably wouldn't go. My friend on the other line 'aww'ed and told me to drive out anyway, that it was only three hours. I patted my back pocket, checking again for my lost check card.
When I returned to the table I related to Jon the conversation. The party, the kids I hadn't seen in a long while. He asked me why I didn't want to go. I knew my answer, readied for it and gave him parts. I still didn't have a job (you know, one that I had started anyway); lost my credit card that morning (I found it later under one of my bags); and really didn't feel like driving three hours to watch people drink, stay the night there, and drive back the next morning. Without shifting attention away from the game, "Just seems like a good excuse to go out and have some fun," was his shrug.
Since then I've thought about what he said, about the party, the conversation and why I decided not to go. Truth is, I hadn't seen a lot of those kids for a reason. A lot of them brought out the worst in me, and few made me happy. Actually, thinking about it now brings on a feeling I had in my childhood of me stretching up in my bed. Not with my arms out, flexibility testing, but in that my body expanded upward; or just my head. It was an odd feeling mostly. Feeling mentally hyper-extended. If I drove out there, I would simply be forcing an pulling away from all that I've tried to accomplish here. Trust, comfort, love, unity across the board. It would be an experience of celebrating the deficiencies and problems that were in a forum that I'm not at all comfortable with yet.
So, I went out to dinner with a friend and watched TV on the couch all night...affected by thoughts of several of the things that happened to me while I attended that school. As images crashed about I wished I hadn't received that phone call at all. Could have focused on me asking for my friend to "send my love and hugs to everyone there." Despite knowing that she wouldn't say it that way. Wouldn't encapsulate who I've grown into. How when people say that college allowed them to find out who they were wasn't the same for me. It turned me on my head, kicked me backward, and I'm really uninterested in resuming that slide downward.
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