To Say Thank You

This post has to do with the power of kindness and the devastating effect it has on a person's life. More specifically, it is about a certain person whom I met some time ago. About two people, not including myself, will know who I am talking about, and if either one of them ever reads this I'll eat my sock. I was going to use a random name generator (which gave me the name "Sean") to refer to this certain person, but then I thought, Screw it. Sean is not necessary.

Anyhow, picture it. He is a senior. I am a sophomore. By all rights we should have absolutely nothing in common, and yet somehow we do. At least I think we do. We develop a friendship of sorts during the week/week and a half that we know each other, and by the time this period is over, we promise to stay in touch. Which we do, after a fashion.

Being the hormonally charged idiot that I am (was) I fall in "love" with this mysterious person, and attempt to set up a meeting with him, to no success. Our friendship remains entrenched in the virtual world. Gradually his e-mails become less and less frequent, I hear less from him in general, until one fateful day last April he appears to drop off the face of the earth completely, and I have heard nothing from him since.

At first I was angry, then sad, then completely depressed. I could not believe that this person, who I trusted more than almost anyone else in the world, could just stop communicating with me. It hurt me more than anything else I'd ever experienced in my pitiful little life.

But tonight, I was going through his old e-mails, and it hit me. This is the most thoughtful and kindest person I have ever met. Seriously. The day after he gets in a car accident? E-mail. How does he handle all my whining and complaining about sophomore year? Sends me advice and encouragement. We trade writing samples, and he writes (of course) nothing but good things about my writing. At one o'clock in the morning, after he witnesses a curiously timed lightning storm: e-mail. My Lord.

And of course the biggest thing about all of this is that, unlike any other senior boy I've ever met (sorry to anyone who reads this) he talks to me at an adult level and as an equal.

There was one time when I called him at nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the house was dark and empty and I had no one else to call. I only intended to listen to his voicemail; to hear another human voice was really all I needed. But then he picked up. The minute or so of conversation we had was enough to save me. It takes a special kind of person to keep their temper when they are bothered by a younger teenager at eleven P.M.

I don't have his phone number, and he doesn't answer e-mails. He went to college out-of-state. If I could reach him at all, I would say, Thank you. Thank you for being my inspiration through the most difficult months of my life so far. Thank you for your words, your patience, the times you laughed at me when I could not laugh at myself.

And, even though you have probably forgotten me by now, thank you for saving my life one dark and silent evening. This is the sort of random act of kindness that completely changes someone's life.

Throughout sophomore and junior year, I've been discouraged and about to give up so many times. Each time, the thought of him and where he is now is enough to keep me going. Maybe one day I'll end up where I want to be, in my dream college somewhere far away from here. Maybe one day I'll have a chance to say thank you.

For now, all I have left is bittersweet nostalgia and a torrent of words I have been saving up, syllable by syllable, possibly never to be given to their rightful owner.

It all boils down to this.

Thank you.