Christmas Day

Christmas Day 2007

Today is perhaps the loneliest days of the year! I was sitting alone in my apartment, bored out of my brains, my cable and internet were off till January third for some technical issue. I bought a few books that I’ve been longing to read, but I woke up, and I just didn’t wanna read! It seemed wrong, even though I don’t celebrate Christmas, but knowing that the rest of the world outside my window is, made it a sin to lie in bed and read all day.
I’ve never been to the movies alone. Today this was about to change, there’s a new Tim Burton movie out, Sweeney Todd, a musical horror film! Odd combination, I wonder what will happen if I go see it by myself, I logged on the theater site, checked the movie time, then I got dressed, and went.
I survived, except for spelling my root beer all over my white jacket. Nothing unusual happens (to my surprise) when you go to the movies by yourself. If anything, I enjoyed it a bit more intensely since there was nobody whispering weird things to me during the movie, and I wasn’t too self conscious shedding a few tears when necessary. The movie, I thought, was a masterpiece, very dark, emotional, shocking, bloody (a little too much) and artistic. Burton has a great talent of creating that evil and dark world, but with a tender human touch that no one else can portrait. Every scene is like a gothic painting, an evil genius.
I was on my way home, but wanted to grab something to eat, and since it was Christmas day, nothing was open. But Oh, how lucky I am, IHOP is open, IHOP to the rescue. I parked my car and walked in, it was packed. The nice waitress handed me a menu, I told her what I had a taste for, and sat on the little bench waiting to be called in and to have my 10 pm breakfast. The place was busy and warm, it reminded me of a scene from “Frankie & Johnnie”, I love that movie. On the wall was a flyer about “missing Jackie” a 14 year old, black-haired, brown-eyed girl. She was last seen August 2007. If I’ve seen her, I should please contact “grandmother” at 555-888. Jackie is beautiful; she has long, silky hair, and a big, childish smile. I haven’t seen her! What should I do? What do people do if they haven’t seen Jackie? The flyer tells you what to do if you’ve seen her, but what if you haven’t? It doesn’t tell you what to do then! So I cried! Maybe because I didn’t really know what to do since I haven’t seen Jackie, or maybe cause grandmother at 555-888 must be so heartbroken, Or maybe just because I doubt that Jackie still has the childish smile across her beautiful face.
While I was sitting there wondering what I’ll do now since I haven’t seen Jackie, a tall and handsome black man walks in with two other guys. probably mixed, with big brown eyes, and an attractive smile. He starts signing with his friends, and I feel so bad that I can’t sign! If I did, I’d have gone up to him and said “hi” in sign language, too bad I can’t sign. The waitress at the cashier signed hello, I can’t even sign hello. He chats so energetically with his friends, I wonder if he was ever able to hear! It would be so sad never to be able to hear, no music, no familiar voices, you wouldn’t know what your mom’s voice sounds like when she is comforting you when you’re sick, or your dad’s angry tone when he yells at you for being bad, you best friend supporting you through a crisis, or even you own voice! That must be so lonely, so quiet, and so lonely.
Another waitress comes to ask them how many people are in their party, half her face was burnt, something very tragic must have happened to her, half her body was burnt, the skin on her left side was crumbled, her face, arm and hand, Even her left eye is misplaced. I thought should I look away? no, no, I don’t want her to think I was staring, not like anything is wrong with her, also I didn’t wanna look away too fast or she might think I’m purposely turning my eyes away! God this is odd, what should I do. I look around like I’m touring the place with my eyes. Then when our eyes meet I smile at her and slowly look away! She must think I’m weird, that’s fine, as long as she doesn’t think it’s a pity smile, cause it wasn’t, it was just a smile. I wonder if she looks at herself in the mirror every morning and remembers her old face. The right side of her face is very pretty; she has golden, blond hair, and beautiful, big blue eyes. I wish she was my waitress so I can tip her good. What a selfish and stupid thing of me to say? What the hell is an extra 20 bucks gonna do for her? How horrible of me.
Ashamed of my own chain of thoughts, I hear her asking the guys how many people are in their party, one of the two guys says” four”, then the other guy says “no maybe five”, My guy talks with the other two in sign language, then says in a loud sound (fife) the waitress looks confused and says “excuse me, did you say five?” and he says again “fife” and nods yes. So only he can’t hear, the other two can. I want to shake his hand! I don’t know why, I wanna stand up and shake his hand and smile at him. He turns around and looks at me, luckily I wasn’t looking at him. He looks at me for a minutes, then sits next to me, “oh God, I must say something, but I can’t sign, maybe I should just smile, or maybe”, “your table is ready” the waitress came back and said, his friends followed her, he got up and looked back at me while walking away, I smiled, and he smiled back, and disappeared into the restaurant.
I haven’t seen Jackie, I didn’t tip the waitress, but I smiled at the handsome man. At least I didn’t walk out completely unaccomplished. I went home, ate my food, sat in bed listening to Madame Butterfly, and red my book, suddenly reading doesn’t seem like a sin at all.

Noha Elsewaify
December 26 2007