So my sister spent the past few days with me which was awesome. For the most part she and I get along really well and she was a nice distraction from life. She got in monday night and we just hung out on campus. Tuesday morning we hit the ground running and were at the Spy Museum at ten am. It was awesome! You have to pick from 20 different spy identities and memorize their....I mean your information. I was Angelena Falcone from Marino, Italy. I was a 21 year old travel agent going to Hanoi, Vietnam on "business." After that we headed over to the museum of natural history and saw coral and butterflies and bones and everything else natural. Finally she wanted to see the monuments. All of them. It is a good three mile walk from where we were, around the monuments and back to the metro. But of course we went. And to top the night off we had to have dinner with my uncle and his partner.
I love Joe and Carlos, I do. They are family so it is kind of obligatory but I always looked up to them. That all changed Tuesday night. For the past few months every time I see Joe and Carlos take the opportunity to tell me why leaving American University is the biggest mistake of my life, they have a tag team thing going. Anyway, it was Carlos's turn to use his "I used to be a professor at Stanford" tactic. I was getting tired of the whole thing especially because this was the first time they have seen my sister in a while. I told them I had made my decision and nothing short of winning the lottery was going to change it. Joe blew up at me. He said then he could no longer support or associate with someone who will not support herself. He said if someone had asked him three years ago where he thought I'd be today considering my history, he would have told them jail or dead. He said he couldn't believe I was walking away from an opportunity that I probably didn't deserve in the first place. I couldn't say anything. All I could do was stare at him. And not cry. He didn't deserve that. Luckily Carlos took over talking to my sister about her future. She is number 5 in her class, which is amazing, although it is MHS. She has no ambition to do anything really and they are trying to push her down the Ivy league path. I just stared at my water glass until dinner was over.
The next day Britt and I went to the zoo. It was actually awesome. There is something so serene about the animals in there; orangutans, elephants, pandas, all of them just chilling. If only life were that simple. Then we had to race to the airport so that Britt didn't miss her flight. On the way back to AU something happened.
Now I may be reading too much into this but- on the metro we were at a stop. Just as a man was racing on the train, the doors closed. Now, on the metro once the doors close, they don't automatically reopen. So the train moved ever so slightly with the man still wedged between the doors. A man sitting in front of me was the only person to jump to his feet. This man was probably in his mid 50's. There were plenty of other younger and closer people to help, but only this man sprung into action. Luckily the doors did reopen and the man was able to slip inside. But this whole encounter got me thinking. We put so much emphasis on the support system that we get from our friends, but it is so refreshing to see that we have hidden angels all around us. I know that sounds overly-religious but I don't know how else to put it. It is just nice to know that if you were truly in need a stranger would be there for you.
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