The Story Game

Caffeine has many effects on people, some it keeps them awake, others irritability and then there's the occasional unaffected. Me? I just fall under the category of extremely awake after two tea bags in one cup of tea with the only option of narcolepsy during my final exam tomorrow. Tonight is my last night of the semester and it's kind of sad to think that I won't be able to see the lonely people walk the intersection of Winthrop and Sheridan and play the story game as I try to drift to sleep. Maybe since this is my last night here, I will share my story game with my readers.

Don't know what the story game is? Well, it's this game you play when you're bored, waiting in line, sitting on a park bench...anywhere! You watch the person's interactions as they are in your passing and without interacting with them you begin to know them by creating a destination they are off to, or what the worried look on their face is for. I love this game for one reason, everyone has a different story written on them so it is always a different game.

Tonight's game is the 8-ride driver that just drove past ever so quickly. His name is Charlie but no one ever askes him his name so he remains unknown to most Loyola students, but tonight is his night that he will become famous on the campus of Loyola University Chicago. You see, he spends most of his nights picking up drunk students from parties and bringing them to the safety of their front step. Charlie hates his job, especially when they get in the car and either puke on the floor where he had just vaccuumed this afternoon or they obnoxiously struggle with their seatbelt for five minutes, making him late for his next stop.

By the break of dawn Charlie is exhausted and retreats back to his fifth floor walk up in Rogers Park to his family of 3, Denise his wife and three year old son, Benjamin. This family has it tough with barely getting by, along with balancing a work schedule that allows each parent to work full time hours and be by Benjamins side. Some would think this would be an impossible way of life, but for Charlie it is enough when he still sees Benjamins smile light up as they play with his only toy, a dull wooden train. A lot can be revived in someone from a child's smile and I think it may be the sign of hope it gives us to keep on moving along like many of our childhood moral teachings of, "I think I can, I think I can".

So Charlie continues to drive the 8-ride van around Loyola Chicago and dosn't groan about his job in picking up drunk kids, he smiles because he knows that he can support the happiness of his son, by being there for him in the daytime. I wonder if the simplicity in Benjamin's happiness of playing with one old toy with his dad could sustain us students if we tried living a more simplistic way to happiness. Maybe the people we run into on a day to day basis have alot more to them then just their job of getting us here to there? Or serving us a coffee in the morning to our exact order.

Say hi to Charlie, and ask him how Benjamin is. Afterall, it is through the small interactions in our day of being aknowledeged that makes us simply happy, so go on out and make another person - simply happy.