2008-11-30 - 4:05 a.m.
Thanksgiving came and Thanksgiving went, and it really was quite delicious. I wish I had some delightful and exciting tale to tell you about the feast � but, alas, I do not: It really was a matter of myself, my mother, and my stepfather gnawing on turkey bones like we were zombies out of Night of the Living Dead, and watching live coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Thanksgiving is such a funny holiday � and we really do forget what we have to be thankful for. Or do I mean, we really do forget what for which we have to be thankful? Now that I am working these days in a library, I have discovered that one must be very careful, even with the expectedly benign habit of wishing people a Happy Thanksgiving. I asked one patron at the library if he had a Happy Thanksgiving. It was really my fault: He was a tall, shaggy African American dude, dressed in a torn pair of jeans, a filthy jacket, and a graying ski cap that looked as though it would walk away if he took it off his head.
"Ohhh," he growled at me. "It was a good Thanksgiving! I was at St. Monica's. They had a free dinner for everyone! I had a plate of turkey and some stuffing and cranberry sauce. And because they had a one plate rule, I went back again, and took a second portion and put it in my pocket! It was great hours later!"
And then there was the older guy, fairly well dressed in a sort of dusty business suit, who walks with a cane. I asked him if he had a Happy Thanksgiving.
He answered, "Well it was all right. I rode the bus all day. I rode the 4 all the way to the end, and back again, and then again. That was my Thanksgiving! At least I was warm."
What's disturbing is when you see folks that you have known for years go into decline and ruin. My parents had this friend � Tim, his name is. He was an elfin English guy in his 40s, with a thatch of blonde-ish hair that stuck right on the top of his head. My folks befriended him, after meeting him at a coffeehouse in the 80s � and he always seemed quite the genial, quick-witted, and well adjusted fellow. He was a fast-talking, wild guy: A party dude, with a strong bohemian streak. He spent most of his youth traveling between various Eselen-like retreats and free love communes.
My stepfather particularly enjoyed the fact that Tim was a wise-cracking stock broker and the two would chit chat forever about stocks and investments and future trends. This was in the mid-90s, I suppose. Tim even accompanied us on a trip to Bearpaw Tent Camp in the Sequoia National Park, and behaved like a normal fellow.
Well, the years have not been kind to Tim, who has turned into a Library Regular. And when I say Library Regular, I mean one of those homeless patrons who wheel in a shopping cart full of belongings at the moment the doors to the library open and stay there until the doors are shut on them at night.
He spends all day in the library reading room, reading trashy magazines, doing crossword puzzles, and checking out movies from the front, which he then watches on the Computer Commons computers. Quite pathetic! Muttering and twitching, he is no longer someone to whom one can communicate. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what actually happened to him, though? Did he take some bad mushrooms?
But what is interesting is to watch someone decline, right before you. For we have seen him shift from being a likable, laid back, easy going chap into being a sort of schizophrenic madman, incapable of doing anything with his life. Or perhaps he had never done anything worthwhile with his life, but we just didn�t notice because he was able to camouflage his craziness with surface charm, which has since eroded. I frankly don�t have the courage to ask him what happened to him � did he lose his job? Did he develop a mental illness? What? I am curious, I must say.
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