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I know you said that these things really happened, but I still think it sounds like fictional accounts designed just to elicit emotions. What were their names? Wait. lemme guess. You don't know... Don't get me wrong... I'm not calling you a liar or anything... Who am I kidding? Yes I am. I can't help it. It's setting of my bullshit detector.

The man who asked where I was going was my dad, when I screwed up major time last semester.

the kid was a 5 year old girl at the salvation army daycare in Charlottesville, va, where I volunteered for about 3 summers in a row for community service. The other kids had been picking on her, and she was bawling and when I took her to the b-room to clean her up she wanted to know why so many people were so mean when it would just be nicer to get along. Basically a kid-version of ‘can’t we all just get along?’

the pregnant woman was actually a 17 year old girl that happened to be one of my better friends in 9th and 10th grade that I kept in touch w/ when I moved to pa. she got pregnant in her senior year and we were hanging out one day and watching tv and the news came on and was going on about some guy that had kidnapped and killed a young child. Tabs freaked out because she was due in about 5 or so weeks.

The dying man’s name was George (I’m not sure of his last name) and he lived in the Cedars Nursing Home in Charlottesville, Va. My dad was the activities director there for about 10 years.. and George was in his 90’s, and never left his bed. (except for everyother day when they took him out in the mornings for a bath in this huge room w/ a huge tub that had bubbled water in it, like a hot tub) and he asked frequently what would happen after he died (and he was very loud about it too.. (he had like, no hearing left.. and the hearing aide can’t help you hear if your ear is dead.. :P )

The baby was my kid half-sister (my mom’s and [now ex] stepfather’s child). I practically raised her for her first 2 years (she said ‘juju’ before ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’). One day I was pushing her on the swing (the cute kind that is bowl-shaped with the two leg holes cut out) and she was looking around all over the place, and I happened to catch her eye and she had that big sappy baby-grin on her face and looked so.. alive. Of course, one never knows what a baby thinks before he/she can articulate properly, but it seemed to me that she was curious about life, because it was her second spring.



So, of course now it doesn’t seem as random, or as ‘deep’, but these people and questions did exist.. though I might have changed the wording a bit due to lack of exact memory of how it was phrased. And instead of replying with just ‘I don’t know’, I usually added a ‘hun’ or a ‘sweetie’ to the end of it. And then talked to them about whatever it was they asked. So it was more personal than it originally sounded.. but oh well. I didn’t feel like writing the whole thing out… here it is now though… :P

If you say so...