Honea Express

Archive for the ‘kindness’ Category

The food court was alive. Tables were double-booked. It was a sea of trays and Gap bags.  There was a TV on without sound and music in the background that lacked any sort of soul.

I was a boy having lunch with his mother.  I was twelve. Give or take.

One man sat one table over.  He was in a suit that wore him cheaply. Even then I could see the frumpiness of it all.  He was wearing the required uniform and they did each other no favors.  He may have worked in the mall or perhaps the car lot across the street.  His lunch was in a brown paper sack as wrinkled as his jacket.  The shadows against it fell from the cloud looming above him.  His tension was cartoonish.

One man had a hampered gait and a fast smile.  He moved as quickly as his body would let him, darting between the busy tide of people to which he was all but invisible.  He took trays and wiped tables and he sang a little something to himself that echoed of happiness on repeat.  His manners were impeccable.

The crumpled man in the crumpled suit crumpled once more his once crumpled bag. He was careworn. He wore the ill-fitting suit like it had once been his father’s and the faded tweed was a weave of ghosts and disappointment pressed firmly across his back.  The cloud above him was dark and full of rain.  He rose from the table, put his hands in his pockets and walked away with far too much focus for a man of his nature.

The bag sat in the center of the table, a monument to his once was.  It sat there and slowly unraveled.  Time marched onward and the bag remained just one less thing that the man had to carry.

The man with the song on his breath circled the shrine.  Then again.  His eyes restless.  His mouth never stopping.  He searched the crowd for shades of tweed and finding none he took the brown bag and placed it in the trash.  He wiped the table until it glowed. And then his attentions were needed elsewhere.

I sat with my mother and ate my lunch.  Perhaps we chatted.  Perhaps my gaze returned to the quiet television.  Perhaps we were already done.

The man in the suit seemed taller when he returned.  His chin was firmer.  His face more red.  He stood at the glowing table and asked above the din as to the whereabouts of the bag he had left.

“The guy tossed it,” someone had said and suddenly the guy was standing there, no longer singing but looking sheepish and lost.  He tried to apologize but his tongue failed him.  He tried to apologize for doing his job.

The man in the suit proceeded to belittle, deprave and defame.  The man in the apron grew smaller and smaller.  The sparkle in his eyes turned soft and gray. His simple song fell muffled beyond silence.

The crowd marched onward. They cast glances and even looks of disgust, but they had trays in their hands and Gap bags on their wrists and there was something on the TV without sound that they could hide from their life in.  Theirs was a sound lacking any sort of soul.

“Stop it,” said a shaking voice from my shaking mouth. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Mind your own business, kid,” replied the man, more or less, and his look was for my mother.

“You left the bag on the table,” I continued. “It was trash.”

And then he said other things that I can’t recall because I was overcome with anger and by that time someone much bigger than myself had decided that shouting at a child for defending a man with needs was even more than they could ignore. As the crowd grew bigger his cloud did too, and then the angry man went away for the second time without his bag and I think he looked at me but I wasn’t watching him.

I was watching a spark of doubt grow where happiness used to be.

History and Hollywood are filled with stories of ordinary men rising to extraordinary heights. Their stories are as similar as they are different. There is danger lurking and a woman involved. There is a war somewhere or the means to stop one. There is passion and agony. There may be tears or laughter. There may be drinks or death. The bottom line is the cause and the fight, and that single moment when a normal human being has the ability to see that some things are bigger than him. It’s about doing what is right.

Is that too big a build-up for what Dan Hughes and his friends are doing in less than a week? Perhaps. They’ll say it is. They may be right or they may be crazy. They may just be the lunatic you’re looking for. There is no place for modesty when money is on the line.

Next week the men in question are going on a journey that covers roughly 80 miles in six days. There will be camping and pubs and tired legs along the way. Let’s be honest, by normal and ordinary I meant out of shape. They are not men that undertake such journeys on a whim.

Perhaps you are wondering why they would undertake it. The answer is easy: Joseph Salmon.

Joseph Salmon was a happy and seemingly healthy 3-year-old little boy, no different than the two small boys sleeping down the hall from where I now sit. No different than your son or your daughter. No different than we ourselves were so many years ago.

In the words of his parents, Neil and Rachael Salmon, “Joseph was a happy, healthy three year old who loved life. He enjoyed playing with his toy trains, his cars and his pretend kitchen. He had a busy social life, with lots of friends from nursery, friends who lived nearby and his little sister. He enjoyed cooking with his mummy, going on trains and buses with his daddy, and playing outside with anyone who would join in. Joseph had a passion for books and had just started to ‘read’ them to his younger sister.

“It felt like his life was just beginning.”

Joseph died on April 1st, 2005.

He died from streptococcal pneumonia.

“It’s very rare and it took him, although suddenly, very peacefully,” said his mother. “When I went in to him in the morning it was obvious from his posture that he’d just gone into a deeper and deeper sleep and never knew anything about it. This too is what all the medical personnel associated with him told us. There are not many (if any) consolations when you lose a child, but at least he didn’t suffer. And as a parent, it’s one of the things you want most for your child isn’t it?”

The Joseph Salmon Trust has been set up in his name to help parents bereaved of a child. There are many good causes in the world and I know that times are tight, but this, my friends, is something worthwhile. This is for the love of a little boy gone and the parents that remain.

It is to help those parents that have nightmares ahead.

For more information or to make a donation please see the following:

The Joseph Salmon Trust

The Dales Walk

All That Comes With It

Come on, ride the train, hey, ride it. Woo woo.

I’ve pushed ‘Publish’ on more than one post that I wasn’t sure about. I’ve never pushed ‘Delete.’ One makes you taller and one makes you smaller. It’s not in me to deny my emotions, for better or for worse.

The only filter on me is my kidney(s). I know that it’s uncomfortable to read at times (the blog, not my kidneys) and it’s not easy to write, but what’s the point of painting on a smile if a clown is just going to cry on the inside? They do that.

I’m having some issues with my stomach, nothing serious, but it is wrecking havoc upon me. A can of fresh stress layered upon it doesn’t help. Some people have a good cry, I open up to strangers. It’s my thing.

Thanks for caring. I mean it.

Now go read a blog that deserves it.

Today, March 14th, is many things. It is the eve of the Ides. It is the middle of college basketball conference tournaments. It is opening day for Horton Hears a Who. The fact that this March 14th falls on a Friday only adds to its importance. Hours of happiness are sure to be had across the land.

Still, there is more. Today would have been Einstein’s birthday had Walter Matthau not killed him. Hey, that shit really happened.

It is Pi Day. Some of you non-geeks may not understand. You see, Pi is 3.14 etc, etc, etc, and today is 3-14. Mathletes rejoice. I’ll admit, I’m not a math fan, but I appreciate random holidays and I do love pie. Me, oh, my.

All of the above would warrant (cherry pie?) mention on this blog. As you know I’ll write about pretty much anything. However, this is where I throw in the clincher. This is also where I ask my mother to stop reading.

You see, today is exactly one month removed from that pseudo-holiday created by St. Hallmark and the good people at See’s. Yes, Valentine’s Day. Pah. Sorry, that was me spitting on the ground (every time the name gets mentioned).

What does that have to do with anything? Oh, everything, my friends, everything. Someone, much smarter than myself, has declared today to be the greatest holiday since the carpenter had a birthday, maybe even more so. Today is (drum roll): Steak and Blowjob Day!

You read me. Here’s the site (NSFW), so you know it’s legit. Let’s make this bigger than Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Gentlemen, thaw your meat(s).

You’re welcome.

It’s reassuring, I suppose, to know that once we war, oil and sextape ourselves out of existence that the world will be left to those that actually deserve it.

A bottlenose dolphin off the coast of New Zealand swam between two distressed whales that had repeatedly beached themselves, and their would be rescuers who were contemplating euthanizing the pair to end their prolonged suffering. The dolphin, named Moko by the swimmers with which it often plays, swam to the whales, gave a few squeaks and led the two through the channel between the sandbars and into the sea. Moko then returned and played with the awed locals.

Something tells me that the dolphins will do a much better job than we have.

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