A Memory of Two Nights

This morning at 2:00, the Tall Guy, the Legal Girl, and I were on the Red Line train pulling out of Addison. We had just watched, in the company of the Wolverine, the season premiere of Jersey Shore and The Room, so our views of human nature were already at a low ebb. The train was empty when we embarked, but one stop later, a crowd of loud young men with a case of Heineken Light got on the train accompanied by two drunken middle-aged black men in Cubs paraphernalia. The young men, all white, when not encouraging their newfound friends to drink more and sit on various laps, were laughing at one of the party who was getting married on the 14^th, declaring this was the last week he would ever be alive. I felt sorry for his fiancée.

Believe it or not, the night was not yet over…at 2:45 we managed to catch the No. 4 bus back to Hyde Park. All very tired, we could only watch in horror as a 65 year-old woman began arguing with the bus driver when a pass she had was not accepted. Refusing to get off the bus, she alternately declared that she had been interacting with this particular driver either forever or only just in the last two weeks and that she would not be thrown off the bus. She begged us for a dollar, all the while declaring that she had seen this driver be disrespectful to an equally elderly man and was not going to let her get away with it again. At this point, I broke Marc's cardinal rule and gave her a dollar because I just wanted to go home and sleep. For the rest of her trip, the woman, when not telling me that God would bless me, moaned continually about her treatment, and a smart-looking man sitting next to us offered to help her write a formal complaint.

Sometimes I think my life is miserable. I have a series of great responsibilities to live up to and no job as yet to help me fulfill them. It is easier than I would like to admit for me to feel terribly down and believe that the Lord's grace and my self-confidence, self-esteem, and perseverance will not be sufficient to secure me work.

Then I think of nights like Thursday, when went over to the Earth Mother and the Gamemaster's apartment for Game Night, and a crowd of eleven crammed in. This included the S.O., whom I had just watched bake a triple-chocolate pecan pie from scratch, the Connoisseur, who has just returned from Germany (he brought chocolate, had some fun stories, and in one hilarious moment I observed, poked his finger at the Princess's backside and made her already wide eyes go wider) and the Dancer, accompanied by her delightful new roommates and friends from her ballroom activities. We played Interview, Celebrities, Telephone Oracle, and Improv Freeze Tag, I got slightly tipsy, and all of us had a wonderful time, the S.O. more than most as she happily told me later…though the joy on the Earth Mother's face at seeing her friends in one room was a sight to behold.

And I think about Thursday night and the people I saw on Saturday night and know that my life is not miserable, that there are so many people whom I care about and who care about me, that there is so much positive energy and grace surrounding me, that I am definitely going to succeed at some point soon.