Things started out pretty normal, but we had a holiday party with our research group, so that was fun and nice to not have to work for a couple hours. People liked my lentil walnut pate and there was plenty of vegan food for me to eat.
After the party, I went with 2 other people to the cancer center to drop off gifts we had collected for a family whose father is dying of cancer. The social worker said he won't be around next year. He has two little girls, one- and four-years old. Gift cards and mittens seem so insufficient compared to the burden they bear.
Actually, before I even dropped off the gifts, I stopped to read a blog entry our friend, Annie, wrote about the loss of their daughter, Piper, and how she's been handling it. It was good to hear an update but it is just as heartbreaking as I imagined it would be dealing with the loss of a child 6 months into a pregnancy. She said she has this constant urge to break coffee mugs on the pavement in anger, but that their mugs have been carefully collected through travels over many years. So what do you break?
On my way home, I was feeling really sleepy, and although I try not to do this, I allowed myself to doze a little. I noticed towards the end of my ride that the boy behind me seemed to be leaning in pretty close to me. At one point I looked back and he asked me if he could use my phone. I asked him why and he said he needed to call his mom. I asked him for the number and dialed it for him. At this point I knew I had to be careful that he wasn't trying to steal it, so I made sure I was situated in way I could grab it back instantly. He said I dialed the wrong number and gave it back. It was too late already, he said, it was almost his stop.
Whew.
Minutes later, as he's getting off the bus, he reaches back and grabs at my phone! I thankfully had a good grip on it and he was out the door in a flash, sans phone, but not before I could yell "YOU F*CKING A**HOLE!!!" as he looked back at me, bewildered.
I told the people around me that he had tried to take my phone, and immediately apologized for my language. People gave me sympathetic looks, and the woman in front of me said she had heard that phone snatching was becoming more common.
I'm pretty shaken up, and a little paranoid at home alone (Adam's bus broke down...so random). But what gets me the most is that this kid is heading down the wrong path, and I don't know what to do about it. I'm tempted to try calling the number (he said it was the wrong number but told me what it should be) and ask them if a teenage boy lives with them, and let them know he tried stealing a phone from someone. I want his mother to know what happened. Or a teacher. Someone. I want someone who cares about him to help him see what a slippery slope it is between petty theft and armed robbery. I want him to never do that again. For him.
I am trying to think about what I could say if I see him again. It reminds me of this scene from a silly movie called "Ira and Abby" where Jennifer Westfeldt's eternally optimistic character is on a subway and a kid pulls out a gun and tells everyone to give him their money. She immediately starts talking to him and asks him how much money he needs, and then goes around politely to all of the passengers collecting the amount he asks for. He is shocked and even lowers his price, and then gets off at the next stop. I think you see the kid again later and his life is somehow changed because of Abby.
I guess I could try to contact the bus company and ask them to review the tapes from the bus and maybe talk to him. That doesn't seem right, but neither does leaving everything as it is.
All this on top of the enormous grief I feel for the families of Newtown and the victims of gun violence everywhere, and for the innocent targets of drone strikes, and for the babies who die before being born and for the billions of animals stuffed into tiny cages and crates, standing and sleeping in their own feces and waiting to die a cruel death to end up on someone's plate. I guess I'm saying that the world is cruel and some days it is more clear to me. But as Annie wrote in her post, the injustice of the world only makes me want to take a stronger stand, to be powerful instead of powerless, to be a force for good instead of a silent bystander.
But for now, I'm ordering pizza.
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