(Patreon) SoBroetry: Ancillary Characters

There's something to learn from everyone you meet.

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We were just 8th graders
Coming into our own.
I’m not even entirely sure that I understood that death would come for us all one day.
Death was something that happened to old people.

I’d heard what the other boys said about him.
A middle school locker room could be a hateful place.
I found that he was just quiet, and maybe there was a reason for that.
One day, I noticed he wasn’t in gym class.
A week or so later…still nothing.
Asking around, I found out that he wouldn’t be coming back to class.

I remember wishing I would’ve stood up for him.
I remember thinking how unfair it was for him to leave us.
The weight of realizing a life of potential was lost was heavy on young shoulders.
And, I remember reality setting in that it could’ve just as easily been me.

***

I was a teenager.
Working at my dad’s paint and body shop to make some money during summer break.
Now, I always knew my dad hired some wild characters.
He was a magnet for instability.

But, I also knew that my dad rather enjoyed telling people what to do.
One day, I thought, someone’s going to get tired of this shit.
Sure enough, someone did one day.
He was a bit of a burnout.
I’m not sure of what his poison was, but he’d partake in it every evening after work.

I’ll never know what happened.
The events that led to a fiery discussion and the threat of someone getting decked.
But, as he stormed out of the shop that day, he told me that my dad was an asshole.

I’m not sure how or why I connected with this man.
But, what he said next is something I can hear as clearly today as I did 20 years ago.
“Stoney, you’re going to be somebody someday.”
I couldn’t see what he saw in me at the time.
It didn’t matter.

To a kid who was trying to figure out who he was, the fact that this man, even in the heat of the moment…rage quitting his job, would stop and encourage me on his way out.

It was something that inspired confidence in me.
Years down the road, I found out that he’d passed.
I’ll never get to thank him for that moment.
Raw and sincere.

***

At an Underoath show in college.
I was sure I had found love.
A brunette with a sense of humor…
Y’all, I was stricken.

She was from Knoxville
A few hours away, and driving home after the show.
I felt like I had a short window
To find out if there really was something there.

She asked if she could sit on my shoulders to see the show.
“Sure.”
I always hung around at the back of the room, never wanting to end up in the pit.
But, yeah! It could be hard to see the stage back there!
This time, I felt being away from the action worked in my favor.

The whole set, we’re singing along.
I hear the excitement in her voice.
I was excited too.
The type that gives you that adrenaline strength.
From experience, the type that allows you to carry someone on your shoulders for nearly an hour.

I didn’t know how I was going to make Knoxville work,
But I was sure that we were going to try.
After the show, she said “be right back,”
And I never saw her again.

That night taught me something
About the way I give
Maybe I shouldn’t always match the energy.
I learned they’ll play you for nothing more than having broad shoulders at the back of a crowded concert.

***

I’ve seen an aimless nature in a man’s eye.
Late 20s. No idea who he really is.
No sense of how he comes across.
No understanding of what it takes to make it in the world that he wants to make it in.

He told me he couldn’t understand why I got the promotion and he didn’t.
To my face.
I guess I can respect that.
But, also…take your L and do better next time. Rude.

He also told me that he couldn’t be friends with co-workers once they’d left the company.
It was logic, a hard rule
“If they’re not here anymore, I won’t talk to them.”
Just like that.
As if his logic dictated that he simply could not pick up the phone and call someone to check in if he wanted to.

He had the nerve to wonder why he didn’t have many friends at times.
How someone could lack self-awareness like that,
It boggled my mind.
It wasn’t that he was afraid to grow.
It was that he was completely oblivious to the fact that he needed to.

But, I even learned from him too.
We can manifest the things we dread simply by not being aware we’re manifesting them.

***

These people.
They come and go
Throughout our entire lives.
Like snowflakes in the south.
Here today, melted tomorrow.

Some, we never even know their names.
They’re barely with us.
Relationships fleeting
As we nod and move on with our lives,
occupied by our own true north.

Tiny ripples
can feel like massive waves
Deep impressions
And lessons that shape us.

Billions of timelines intersecting.
A multiverse in its own right, sprawling before us.
The many people you meet in your time here.
The many who are abruptly gone.
There’s something to learn from them all, no matter how major or minor.

Most of all, seeing what you’ve learned from these characters
Can offer the most important perspective of all…
That you are an ancillary character in someone else’s arc.
Think about the impressions you want to leave on others throughout this multiverse.

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