Everything’s All Right…
It was the beginning of Flyback Week, a week with no classes at my law school. The purpose of flyback week is to give second- and third-year students an opportunity to attend job interviews abroad. Having already accepted a job offer, however, I had this week more or less free and I was looking forward to some relatively relaxed time to myself.
So I had been sitting at a table in a San Francisco Starbucks after practice, waiting for my ride home. My laptop and several books lay strewn across the table, my staff leant in a corner, and an empty plate sat before me, having just been cleared of cheesecake. Hero was playing off a VCD in my laptop; it was a good time for a break, with my mind somewhat tired from law school and my body weary from workout. It was an afternoon of relaxation for me, blessed by the absence of any mandatory schoolwork due the next day, but it was a busy day for the Starbucks… at another table, a college student was typing up a economics paper, while her classmate snoozed with his feet propped up on another chair. A pair of old friends were catching up on old times in another corner, and a large group of chinese San Franciscans were enjoying a social gathering at the big table while their kids played games and make-believe with each other in a scene that could have fit comfortably into warm memories of almost anyone’s childhood.
Some of the kids took an interest in the movie playing on my laptop. I turned the screen and adjusted the volume for them, while laying a sheet of paper over the keyboard; when you have kids in a coffee shop, spills are an obvious potential hazard, but I didn’t feel inclined to shoo them away. I turned back to my books, and not a few moments later, I saw a plastic coffee cup cover bounce past my computer, dappling the screen and paper covering the keyboard with streaked droplets of hot chocolate. One of the boys had been less than careful about handling his drink, but it was a minor, harmless accident.
“Sorry.”
“It’s ok.”
I took the sheet of paper, spattered with little drops of sugary cocoa, off the keyboard and turned to fetch a few napkins from the counter to make a new keyboard cover and to clean off the screen. But when I turned back, there was another chocolate-milk spill on the now-unprotected keyboard, this one markedly bigger than the harmless spray I had been attending to.
“Please don’t do that!”
It was impossible not to be a little frustrated by that. Two spills in less than twenty seconds. Just goes to show you really can’t be too careful when you have children, liquids, and electronics in close proximity. I hurriedly grabbed more napkins and moved to wipe up the spill before it had a real chance to sink in and start playing havoc with this laptop on which I depend so heavily in school. The sound of my tense voice startled the “culprit,” a little girl who couldn’t have been more than four or five years old, and the beginnings of fear crept onto her face. She started crying.
I hadn’t noticed, but her mother was right there. She quickly shepherded her daughter away. No words from the child, but all the intended messages came through quickly enough in her plaintive wailing: “I’m sorry! It was an accident! Don’t punish me! I didn’t mean to!” In one hand she held a little box of chocolate milk, in the other, a foil pull-tab that had obviously popped free of the drink with an unexpected jerk, causing the splash. She held both items up in front of her mother, in a gesture of partial guilt, partial innocence, and a search for forgiveness. Her mother turned to me.
“I’m really sorry…”
I waved her off quickly. “It’s okay.” I said that in the even but hurried tone of a person busy with an immediate problem. She left, her daughter held close in her arms, while I dabbed at the keyboard, soaking up the larger part of the spill. I tore off the corners of the napkin, reaching in between the smaller cracks and crevices in an attempt to absorb chocolate milk that had managed to break surface tension and slip into more dangerous territory.
Several minutes later, I had finished cleaning the keyboard, and did some diagnostic typing to make sure everything was in working order. I looked around the room, but didn’t see the little girl. With everything all right, I was soon calm again, and returned to my books. The college students were still sleeping and writing, the kids were still playing, and everything was normal again.
But everything wasn’t quite all right. A nagging sense of unfinished business dallied around the edges of my thoughts, and twenty minutes later, I scanned the room again, and this time I caught sight of the little girl, sitting in her mother’s lap at the table at the far end of the store. She sat quietly, while her mother conversed and laughed with the other adults at the table. The carton of chocolate milk sat on the table before her. Being kept out of trouble, I see. But she was playing with the other kids, earlier… and now she’s just sitting there. It had just been an accident – a potentially costly one, to be sure – but it was over, and there certainly wasn’t any reason to ruin the rest of her afternoon.
I got up and walked towards the table, and knelt down next to her mother’s chair. The little girl looked at me; her expression not quite readable, but showing something halfway between uncertainty and apprehension. I waved hello from perhaps two feet away, and smiled quietly.
Are you ok? Everything’s fine. It’s all right
The rest of the table hadn’t noticed, but her mother turned when she heard me speak. I looked up at her and repeated, “Yeah, everything’s fine. How is she? Is she ok?”
“Your computer is fine?”
“Yeah, everything’s all right. Is she ok?”
A smile from her mother. “Yes, she’s ok.” The rest of the table and quieted and turned to look at me. I turned to look back at the little girl and brushed my knuckles lightly against her hand, trying to be reassuring. “It’s all right.” I wasn’t exactly expecting a response. I was just hoping she would feel calm, forgiven, or at the very least, not afraid of me. I got up and walked back to my table.
My ride showed up about ten minutes later. I packed up my books and laptop, retrieved my staff from the corner, and headed for the door. On my way out, I noticed that the little girl had been let out of her mother’s lap, and that she was looking back and forth between the other kids and me, on my way out the door. With one last smile and a wave goodbye, I pushed through the door and headed for the car.
That’s all I really wanted – that she have this afternoon free to play with the other kids. Human memory’s a strange thing. I’m not sure what makes a memory stick, whether good or bad. I have no idea why some memories are so intense that they get repressed, and why others, equally vivid, manage to bury themselves so close to waking consciousness that they get brought to the surface with regularity. She probably won’t remember this afternoon, but on the off chance that she does, I would hope that it at least isn’t a sad memory.
This is all a bit much thought to be giving what amounts to a pretty ordinary afternoon. Maybe I did the wrong thing; after all, we’re taught not to trust strangers and largely for good reasons. Maybe I’m just soft, not wanting to leave a bad memory with some kid who, for all I know, could either grow up to be a lovely saint or a lethal man-eater over the next twenty years. A run-in with me barely amounts to a drop in the bucket of a lifetime of human experiences. Maybe I was just trying to even the scales in my own memories, having spent enough time as the scared little kid who was always the runt in school. Maybe I didn’t want to be responsible for a child’s tears. Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time and nobody cares enough to give it a second thought.
Nah. I know why I went to the trouble. It was important to me. I spent enough time as a child sulking at school with my head down and my hands in my pockets, wishing that life could be fairer, or failing that, that people would just care a little, just a little, about my feelings. It’s just not the way people are, I guess. It’s not anything I’ve known most people to think much about. But they should.