I heard the following story once. I’m not sure when. Maybe it’s a parable, maybe not, but I’ve thought about it so much over the last week that I can’t help but put pen to paper.
If you asked him about the bus he didn’t know what to say except that it hit him. He didn’t remember how, maybe he was looking left when he should’ve been looking right, he was rather clumsy like that, but one way or another, wham.
It was a miracle he got out alive, they said. Not even a scratch. He didn’t believe in miracles but would smile whenever someone gaped.
Soon he was out of the hospital and went about his life just as he had before. I can’t remember what he did for a living but it probably wasn’t an important job like a businessman or laundromat attendant, so let’s just say he was an American who worked and went to dinner parties and did other things people who live in American cities do.
Once, at a dinner party, someone came up to him.
“I got hit by a bus once,” he told the person.
The person looked him up and down.
“It was really bad,” he told the person.
“Was it?” the person asked. “You look fine.”
He thought for a minute, then said, “I guess it wasn’t all that bad,” although it could have been very bad. The only reason he had survived was luck, random chance, but he didn’t say that to the person. “You’re right,” he said. “I am fine.”
“So why are you making such a big deal about it?” the person asked.
He couldn’t answer so he walked away.
He thought about the person’s questions a lot after the dinner party. He would be sitting in the kitchens at other parties, holding glasses of non-alcoholic wine, he didn’t believe in drinking, and someone would start talking to him, and all he could think about was that it wasn’t all that bad when he had gotten hit by the bus, and the person talking to him would lose interest and walk away. This happened many times.
Eventually he convinced himself that he was happier when he had been hit by the bus. Not after he had been hit, but in the instant the speeding bus made contact with his body. He didn’t want the aftermath of the thing but the thing itself, but what it represented. He had no idea what it represented.
Some time had passed since he had last been hit, and he had sued the bus but the case was stalled, and he had nothing better to do so one day he waited for a bus to approach and at the last second left the curb’s safety and stepped in front of it.
That’s where the story ends, for now, although I might tack something on in the future if I remember the ending.
Maybe he won’t be alright. Maybe he will be.
Maybe, in the future, he’ll sit in a kitchen at a dinner party and someone will come up to him.
“Did you get anything out of it?” the person might ask.
“No,” he’ll reply. He will have had to drop his lawsuit when he stepped in front of the bus the second time.
“So why’d you do it?” the person might ask.
“I guess I forgot what it felt like to be slammed,” he’ll say, and then he’ll walk away. Maybe he’ll limp, or maybe he’ll have no legs at all, but the only thing I know is however he ends up it will be all his fault.
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