It's a widely known fact that December is a time for both giving and taking. Not in the sense of gift exchange but in the sense of criminal behaviour. Behind the sugar coated curtain of Christmas glee and affection lies a very select group of scum that target to take advantage of these kinds of people. There are two kinds of people during Christmas Eve. The ones that approach the 25th with the plan to smile a bit more, or ones that approach the 25th, circling the date, and making sure that they're prepared to start breaking into houses or mugging those unfortunate carrying bags filled with presents.
You tend to hear such expressions like, 'Oh their house got robbed on Christmas? That's really unfortunate' or 'Oh they lost their daughter so close to Christmas? That's really unfortunate.' Both those scenarios are really bad but an added magnitude accompanies them when mentioned that it happened in such a close proximity to Christmas day.
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| Unbeknownst to little Susan, her house was being robbed during her rendition of Silent Night. Better have kept those receipts bitttch |
I spent a beautiful Christmas morning stuck in a dark room with someone that was not going to be around for much longer. Because it was Christmas I felt an extra ounce of compassion in my heart for this man that is usually reserved for extremely attractive Asian women.
This particular person suffered from the common ailment of being incredibly unlucky. So it was my job to watch him and make sure that this person didn't spread his unluckiness.
The room itself was just a dark cold room with one single exposed lightbulb on the floor in the middle of the room. Our shadows were cascaded in such intricate shapes that it was like we had silent silhouettes of guardians that watched over the two of us. Two chairs and a table were the only things given to us. We had no source of entertainment other than each other and really that was way more than enough when I got started.
So this John that I was with suffered through the textbook symptoms of facing inevitability. His hands were shaking, his eyes were darting around, and he was blinking faster than an epileptic watching Japanese television. Soon he would tire himself out and then he would begin to ask questions. In this room of waiting, societal norms would crumble and it didn't matter if you were racist, ugly, or a woman. There was one person in front of you and if that person was a young Asian kid then you better forget the fact that your grandfather called my grandfather a gook and begin to understand just how hopeless you are.
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| May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end! |
People broke faster than others and this person here broke pretty fast. Maybe it was the added weight of Christmas day or whatever but this John broke fast and he started crying into his large hands.
The first person you experience like this really takes a toll on your psychology. The second, not so much. Then the fifth person and it just becomes a job. Then after thirty it just becomes white noise. Everything they do could have been filled in a questionnaire and I could have check boxes according to how they would act in the next couple hours. You really become dehumanized after so much of these jobs.
This John begins to talk and he tries to regain his sense of dignity by asking for my name. I tell him my name and he tells me his. I don't take any extra precaution to remember his name because really there isn't a point. I've been told that the only two names I would probably remember while doing this job would the first and last. John asks why someone so young like me is doing something like this and I tell him that it's for money. He makes a joke about it and laughs a little too ecstatically and I just smile without changing my eyes.
He tells me his life story and I become good at condensing decades of lives in a short Wikipedia-like sentence.
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| A single beautiful moment of death coalesced into one convenient sentence that takes out all sense of beauty. |
And with this he looks at me hoping that I gained some insight from his journey. His long walk through a well-worn path of birth beget into school beget into university beget into career beget into death. And sadly I couldn't lie to him and I simply nodded at whatever the hell he had to say. Eventually his ancient screws that held him up unscrewed after years of wear and his entire body drooped into his chair, a sign of surrender, like the final act of a marionette, discarded and might as well been forgotten.
We both jump slightly at the loud knock behind us and I reach across the table to give the man one last handshake. As I walk away, what he had shared with me was already vaporizing into nothingness. I left and that was it for his story. I get to continue mine.
I stopped by T&T supermarket on the way home and picked up some milk bread that had just the right amount of sweetness in it. I really liked that bread and we needed it to stuff into the Christmas turkey.
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| Sorta like this but without the chocolate |
This has happened so much now that all memories and stories about different lives has become just a single entity of insignificance that I could no longer even feign interest in them. There's a small window of thought that emerges from me after each time I have to spend hours with an unfortunate person's last lap. I wonder if I want to spend my last hour talking to someone who will forget eventually. Is there really a difference between telling a loved one and having it forgotten by them when they too pass away compared to telling a stranger? Or did these people just want to tell anyone because intrinsically we are all selfish and they just want someone to acknowledge that what we did mattered? But eventually I'll just forget and do whatever is next in my life.
So really all I'm hoping that can come out of this is that I don't die during Christmas and when I do die, I don't want it long and drawn out. I think.
