Splendid Ignorance

1990

I had hit a low point in my life in early 1989 that lasted well over a year. My life had begun to stagnate shortly after I graduated high school and I floundered around until I had hit the lowest point in my life that I was currently wallowing in. I had begun to drink heavily and sought to escape my problems by drowning myself in others. I was living at home with my parents, working fast food, and had dropped out of college; actually I had been academically dismissed so I didn't really have a choice in the matter. I could not see any meaning for a future, but then I didn't search too hard for one. I preferred to relish my past despite the fact that it was pretty bleak.

Then, in the spring a door unexpectedly opened. One of my fellow burger-flippers had left to work at a small construction company. He came in one night to get a burger and fries just as I was going on break. I sat down and talked with him.

"You should check it out." Karl said as he shoved some fries into his mouth.

"I don't know a thing about construction, Karl. You know I'm not good with stuff like that."

"And flipping burgers is a skill you are a master at? Like anything, it's just something you learn. I didn't know anything about it either a few weeks ago. They'll teach you. It's not too hard. They have a need for a drywaller. Come over with me tomorrow and talk to them. I already brought you up to the owner."

"What's the place called?" I asked.

"Petra Remodeling." Karl answered.

I went. I talked. I was hired. Simple. They even lent me tools until I could buy some of my own. Ray James was my foreman, and he showed me the basics of how to do drywall work.

I am not sure what would have happened if I had not left the fast food place and went to Petra? It would have probably involved being swallowed by a whale. However, I doubt if I would have offered up a prayer like Jonah.

It was while slapping mud on the walls of overpriced condos that I began to talk to Ray about my struggles; love's labor's lost. He listened and answered what he could and said he'd talk to his pastor about things he didn't feel comfortable given advice about or just plain didn't know. In addition to asking about the struggles of love, I would also throw out gems like, 'did all the dinosaurs die in the flood and if so, where they there alongside humans prior to then'? I admired him for his transparency. He wasn't a know-it-all. Although at the time, to me, going to ask a pastor about anything was as logical as calling up Dr. Spock...beam me up, Scotty.

On my birthday that year, I was turning 23. I began to feel a bit more positive. I had a job that seemed to have somewhat of a future, and I was not relying on alcohol to escape my problems as much. My problems were not evaporating but, by talking to Ray, I saw them more clearly as merely consisting of regrets about past failures and missed ships. Nothing I had any control over now. I was beginning to let the past go. It was starting to lose its grip on me.

After a few months at Petra, Ray took me out for a steak dinner and we chatted. Things were going pretty well that night until I heard Peter Gabriel on the jukebox singing, 'In Your Eyes'. It was like a vortex had occurred in time and space and I had been sucked in. I thought of Darcey for the first time in weeks. My expression was clearly transformed because Ray immediately noticed.

"What's going on, man? You look like you're chewing on a nasty piece of gristle."

I snapped back to the present although my memory's shadow clung in my mind like morning mist refusing to evaporate with the light of the rising sun. I exhaled.

"I'm sorry; I got caught up in a thought." I said.

"Really?" Ray didn't think it was so simple.

"It's nothing, really."

"Really?" He didn't' buy my dismissal for a second.

I looked at him and he smiled knowingly. I smirked and shook my head. "You mind listening?"

"What else am I here for? I'm not known as a conversationalist." Ray laughed.

"OK. Remember, you asked for it."

"Let's get some coffee." He said, signaling the waitress.

"Funny you should say that." I said.