Monday, September 04, 2006

I Am Not A Mother Hen

I am not a mother hen. I'm the oldest. I always have been.

I went out with two of my close friends Friday night. Dinner, some drinks, along with a quick stop at a new trendy hot spot. I wish you could have felt the same disgust and loathing I did when I typed "trendy hot spot". I'm OK with a bar or lounge wanting to be so cool it won't have any markings or signs outside, even if the bar isn't in New York. I draw the line with downtown College Fucking Mother of God We Burn Goalposts When We Beat Duke Park, though. Look, owners of whatever your little piece of pretentious lego-furniture-filled-dimly-lit-neon-shit stain is called, you are not that cool and you never will be. You are in a college town surrounded by college bars were college students are going to want to actually drink, especially college students who know goddamn well good enough to not get caught up in the "out-cooling" everyone game because they are too busy having fun. At least for now.

ANYWAY, after drinks my friend dropped me off at the Metro and I went home. When he dropped me off it was late, and because my mind works overtime producing little skits of drama I thought that if I was killed on the way home my friend would have been the last person to have seen me alive.

So his mother calls me the next morning to ask if I have seen him. I didn't think much of it, mothers in general and especially his can be paranoid. An hour later, she calls again. My friend missed his weekly bagel with his father. I know he doesn't miss that. So I'm a little worried now, but not too much.

Why should I be worried? His house was two minutes away. It was raining, but still, if something had happened surely someone would have heard something. "Surely someone would have heard something" is a little piece of logic we throw around all the time. It is out of the bounds of our logic that anything could happen to anyone and no one know about it. No matter what happens, someone somewhere knows about it, right? We are on video cameras almost 24/7 when we are out in public, we have friends, roommates, co-workers, the creepy guy downstairs and all those fuckers out in traffic. The world is too crowded to die unknowningly. There is no fucking way I could be in an accident or die and no one know about it for, what, say a half a day. Ten hours tops. Right?

So I gave his mother the cell number of the other friend we were out with that night. I go to make some instant oatmeal and waste some time seeing what movies are on TNT, TBS and Spike TV(Bedazzled, College Football, and Bloodsport).

I do some laundry. I brush my teeth. I notice a new voice mail on my cell. It's the other friend. In his voice I hear sadness(which I later learn was just fatigue after a long drive). It's a simple message. Call me back. He never leaves simple messages. He leaves the kinds of messages you think Jim Carey leaves his friends.

Now I freak out.

I call everyone. I call the now officially missing(at least in my head) friend's cell and house. No answer. I call his mother back, she doesn't answer. I call my other friend back, his phone is off. I call my family, my girlfriend, another close friend. No one knows anything.

At this point, I can feel my heart doing a balancing act. It can tip two ways: everything is fine, calm down, if something had happened you would have heard. Or, he's dead. And you were the last person to see him alive.

If I let it tip to the calm side, there is a nagging fear that I'm fooling myself. Let it tip to he's dead, and I'm overreacting.

As it turns he out he was, of course, fine. Of course because no one I know will ever, ever die. At least like that. Or of course because he was in the gym without his cellphone, and he was of the understanding that his weekly bagel with this father was canceled. His father forgot. My friends depressed message was nothing.

That was a good moment when I heard all that. The regrets of not spending enough time with my friends that had built up all day melted away into resolutions.

So everything was fine. I freaked out, largely for no reason. That one phone message shouldn't have sent me into a a mile-a-minute heart murmur state of worry.

I called my family to let them know everything was OK. As I was talking to my mother, my youngest brother picks up the phone and asks if I can come over. He's almost ten years younger than me. He is just starting college, he has a girlfriend, and he has tons of friends. I ask him why he wants me to come over.

"So we can hang out!"

He actually said so we can hang out motherfucker. I understood, though. When are you coming home?

You never stop being the oldest. Once you take on the dad role, it's yours. No matter where you go or what you do.

It's hard not to think of everyone that way. People close to you feel like your responsibility, that's why you care about them. Everyone needs taking care of and looking after.

Well, almost everyone.

4 comments:

lightWriter said...

You forgot the moral of the story: We aren't guaranteed any days on this earth, so we should live each one like it is the last. Cliche, maybe, but true. The Croc-Hunter is dead; it can happen to anyone.

-your previously missing friend :)

Kris said...

True, true. Which is why regrets turned into resolutions. Which is why we need to hang out more :)

Kris said...

HAHAHAHA.

Distance isn't a killer, that's why we have the internet and planes!

And we did do some hanging tonight, need to do more. It was...fun.

I'm going to hell for quoating Generations, aren't I?

Anonymous said...

yes you are but i will too cuz i'm finishing the quote.

...oh my....


haha i'll try to sound less depressive next time :)

more like...CALL ME BACK BUDDY O MINE! LET'S MAKE LOVE!!!!!!