This guy brad and I are becoming friends on the boat. good friends i think. And tonight he comes in and after were talking for a bit he asks me: Jabari, did you always know you were going to be a bad ass? Like when you were a little kid?”
And I look at him- start to speak then stop then this is what I say almost verbatim. (forgive the punctuation I needed to get it all out before I got back to work)
“… Fuckit. But I dont tell many people about this, so dont laugh. When I was younger- younger and shorter and prone to getting lost in large crowds, I did just that on a family trip. My parents had taken me and my sister who must have been very tiny cause my father carried her around all the time so I was maybe seven on a vacation. Family trip to Disney World and I was all excited so first thing *I* do, cause im 7 and not very bright, is to run off and get lost. I ran around for a while before I realized i WAS lost, so by the time it became apparent I was good and lost. I was on some kind of main roadway in the park and it was full of adults. I dont do well in large crowds. I know that now but i didnt understand why back then I was getting very weirded out, I just knew I needed off that main street, so I ducked over to the side between two of the buildings in what looks like a makeshift alley. I was in that alley looking for either my parents or Daffy Duck or somebody to tell them im lost, when this man calls attention to himself from farther in the alley. He’s dressed about like what a disney character in a suit would look like. He was an older black gentlemen, he had a wiry white mustache and a little very grey white reduced fro going on, and little morgan freeman old man dots on some of his face. He was wearing what looked like a suit, in so far as I had seen suits before, my father wore them. But his was.. old. Like it was very worn and a little frayed maybe? with thin faded pinstripe lines and a tattered old handkerchief, and he wore gloves with fingers in them, but trim nails- for some reason i remember his nails were very trim. He smiled at me sadly and beckoned for me to follow him and since I was 7, it was the early 80’s, and as previously mentioned I was not all that stellar in the common sense department, I assumed he was going to show me to an office or something so I could find my folks. So I went. Maybe a quarter of the way into this alley He indicated a door I had not seen before and gestured for me to go inside. I looked and saw a very dimly lit office with a desk and two chairs, one on either side. His desk was completely empty of things. The office however had charm. Old dusty charm, but charm. It was damp, but not unpleasant. Pictures on the walls of the park in its early years with characters I didnt recognize- the old man shaking hands with people Id never heard about. But honestly, if he wasnt shaking hands with the Jackson 5 or He-man I probably wouldnt have cared all that much. Moving past me, the old man directed me to the other chair where I sat kicking my feet while he moved across to the other side. We sat looking at eachother for maybe a minute. And that doesnt seem long, until youre 7 and its just you and some old man looking at each other in silence for that long. Then its forever. After forever the old man leaned forward, and put his hands together folding his fingers.. I remember thinking that his fingers looked so frail, not strong like my fathers hand- and would my fathers hands look like that one day? would mine? Then I blinked and realized he’d been talking to me and i missed what he was talking about.
“See thats what Im talking about Jabari. You zone out. you miss things and you cant do that. Youre are made for bigger things. greater things. and you will not get there if you dont look up and pay attention. We cannot afford to lose you Jabari. You are too important.” My little mind was blown. did this guy just call me by my name? do my parents know where i am? How the hell old is that suit anyway? ” Jabari. JABARI. Listen. Focus. You have GOT to learn focus. Here.” and he pulled a drawer on his side of the desk and took a sack from it. without looking he reached into the sack and pulled out a coin about the size of a quarter, but when i looked at it, it didnt look like any quarter Id ever seen before. It was not George Washington’s face on the front. And the head was facing out from the coin. “You keep this.” He said. “Keep it safe and dont tell anyone that you have it. One day you’ll know what its for. Keep it SAFE, Jabari.” and he slid the coin across the desk face up. Looking at me. I looked at it, then at him, then at the coin again.
“Now get out” he says, and frankly im a little offended.
“Wheres my mom?”
“At the head of the alley you came down. Remember to shut the door when youre outside.”
I scrunch up my little face a bit but the man had given me a quarter to get lost, So I stood up and used both hands to push my chair back to the desk like I had been taught. I grabbed the coin and slid it into my pocket after looking at it for a bit. Then I left the office and turned towards the alleyway. I had taken 2 steps before I remembered to shut the door but when I turned to do it- no door. No door at all in the little alleyway. Didnt even look like there should have BEEN a door and while i was looking for signs of one so i would know I wasnt crazy, my mothers voice shook lose mortar out of the walls around me when she shouted my name and ran to hug me up in her arms. The rest of that day was a blur. Of course I told my parents about my little mini adventure of course they didnt believe me when of course I could not prove it- but I did not tell them about the coin. Through the years ive held on to it as best I can. I try to take it everywhere and sometimes i think ive lost it, but it always turns up again. It has survived move after move after move. Arcade binges and piggy bank busts. I’ll find it under the couch, in the bathroom on the counter, in the change cup in my car- always. I even brought it with me out here, now it’s just a reflex. I feel.. unfinished if I dont have it. Like a good luck charm I guess.”
Here I start rummaging around in my pocket like im going to show it to him and his face gets bright with wonder like he thought i may have been bullshitting but maybe im about to prove him wrong.
“I still dont know what its for, but everyday i think about it.” and here I pull my fist out of my pocket and open it to reveal.. nothing, but i do flip him off and grin really big. We laughed a lot over that for a while and he goes “You could NOT have come up with that on the fly” -but i totally did. =)
To paraphrase someone I wish I could have called ‘friend’ – Storytelling is a skill like any other. And if you want to maintain a level of excellence, you have to practice constantly.