some cute stories

1.)

My stepfather recently remodeled the kitchen in our house, which isn't really news, as our house has been in a constant state of reconstruction for the entire time we have been living in it. This isn't a bad thing by any means. If you are going to marry someone, I think you should marry someone who is constantly trying to improve.

My mother has recently been growing plants with an almost obsessive desperation and meticulous attention. There have been plants crawling all over the house since January. We have full-grown potted tomatoes on the piano.

And, because these two things have been happening at the same time, my stepfather decided to put in a big bay window in front of the sink (you know, the kind that sticks out of the house a bit), with glass shelves for her plants. And because of this, the faucet which he chose to accompany this sink is a great monstrosity stretching way up into the air which can be bent like a garden hose to water all the plants on the windowsill.

The problem with this -- which he found out only after ordering and assembling the sink -- is that the water which comes out of the sink is softened, and would therefore kill any plants watered with it.

So my mom is standing in the kitchen asking why he ordered this huge purposeless garden-hose sink faucet, taking up all this ugly space. And he stands there and thinks for a moment before unlatching the hose, holding it out in front of him like a pistol, and, grinning, says, "For getting into arguments."

And my mother's laughter sounds like forgiveness.


2.)

My father's doppelgänger's girlfriend was telling me the other day about a paper she had to write for English class, a story about her life told with symbolism.

"I decided to use fire as a symbol," she said, "which was very cliche and juvenile, but it's what I did."

"The thing is," she went on, "I kind of lied a little when writing the paper, trying to make it more dramatic, make me look more cool and angst-y. Because it was a very angst-y story. Embarrassingly angst-y."

I asked her to tell me about it.

"Well, okay," she said. "So it was, like, 4:30 in the morning, and I tried to sneak out of my window. But it's a very small window, and I'm not very limber. So I sort of got stuck, and --"

"Wait, why were you sneaking out of your window?"

"Because I wanted to burn this letter."

"Oh, okay. Alright. Continue."

"So I ended up just going out the backdoor, and my mom heard me. And I had a lighter with me, and she came outside and she thought I was smoking pot. And I was like, 'why would I be smoking pot at 4:30 in the morning, half an hour before you wake up to go to work?' Besides, I have a very good sleeping schedule. Sleep is important to me.

"I told her I just wanted to burn this letter -- which was a very thin, one-page letter -- but when she saw it, she thought it was really thick and heavy, a lot bigger than it actually was. And so she said I couldn't burn it by myself; I needed my dad to help me."

At this point, my father's doppelgänger started laughing, an oh no kind of laughter, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. And she looked at him the way two people who really know each other see each other, because she knew he had heard this story.

"So my dad came outside to help me burn this letter, and it just wouldn't burn. He put it in this metal tin sort of thing, and I'd just -- I'd just really expected it to burn, you know? I just wanted my dramatic symbolic letter-burning moment. But instead my dad and I were in my backyard at 4:30 in the morning with this stupid piece of paper in a metal tin that took forever to actually light on fire and kept going out and stuff, and, God, it was so pitiful. And then after so long, when it was all burned up, he finally just dumped it out on the ground and that was it. That's the story."

"I think that's the best story I've ever heard," I said.

3.

There's an elderly and vaguely southern man at my church named Bob. He spent his whole life in "the ice cream business," and now lives in a nursing home. He preaches to all the other people in the home, and mistakenly called a woman a man, twice.

He has told me this story about five or six times, which isn't very many for Bob.

Bob wears a faded blue suit, too wide for his shoulders and too long for his torso, every time I see him. His collar is usually turned up on the right side, which I fold back down while he is talking to me, every time I see him.

Bob is my best friend.

He usually greets me with a smile when I walk in the door, and begins by asking, "Your dad, um... What's his name?"

And I respond with my grandpa's name.

"Yes, David!" he says. "You know, a couple of weeks ago I think I saw him in here, he was visiting, you know. And I had asked him to give my memorial talk years ago. So when I saw him I says, 'You know, David, I don't think I'm going to need you anymore. I'm not gonna die!'"

And he looks at me, eyes smiling so brightly that somehow you begin to realize nothing has ever been more true. Bob really will not die. It is simply not in the realm of truth for anything else to happen. This fact is an absolute, and it is standing right in front of you, beaming.

"I'm gonna keep right on living, all the way up to -" he moves his hand to his left, in a small shaky sweeping motion " - you know, when God restores the earth back to the way it was in the garden of Eden?" He looks at me for understanding, and I nod, because I have heard this story. "Before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and they weren't supposed to eat it. But the devil told 'em to and so they did it. And you know what?" His eyes are shining and he taps me on the arm, smiling. "I'm not gonna listen to him!"

"Me neither, Bob," I say, every week, twice a week. And every time, the story is brand new. It solidifies. The smile only becomes more genuine, the light in his eyes only brightens, and I turn his collar down and wonder if the suit was always too big for him or if I should be worried.

But you just can't worry about Bob, not when you hug him and say, "Bye, Bob," and he says, "I love you too." 

And this is why Bob gets dropped off here twice a week: for a hug and an "I love you."

Stories are not always for hearing, and love does not always involve knowledge. I don't know much about Bob, and he knows even less about me. But every time he tells his story, I love him a little bit more, and thus it feels I come to know him a little bit better. Sometimes he tells stories about senior ditch day, or a rabbi he talked to about the sunset, and once he told me the story of how his wife died.

These stories become him, though they are not really all that he is, and it is a great comfort to hear the remembered stories of an immortal friend.