Dear Unidentified man

Dear Unidentified man,

I want to thank you for showing me the part of the world that you should not speak,hear, or see about. Your body showed the dark parts of you life from the bruise on you leg to the holes on your arm, your teeth was as rotten as the 4 week apple on the floor next to you. But you eyes told a different story, it was filled with love, joy, and happiness. So I thank for everything that I learned from you, but I am sorry that you had to die for me to realize the cold truth.

From when I was born till I was 7 it was always just me and my mom. My mom was very protective of me so I always was shielded from the world and was held in her protection. My mom had just started dating my step dad for a couple month now. We were visiting his mother's house at Maschern Indiana street in North Philly. I try to say this as kindly as I can but, the house was disgusting. The house only had only one light source which was on the end of the step railing and it projected a yellow light since no one had cleaned the light cover. They had an old fashioned tv were you change the channel on the TV but they had a Spanish show on so I didn’t pay attention to that. My skin felt like their was a swarm of bugs crawling on me. the air was thick and it smelled like food. There was so many bugs there that you can’t count, I needed to get of there so I asked my mom if I can sit on the step. She said yes but only if I go out there with my new cousins and that I can’t leave the step.

So me and my new cousin were sitting on the step looking at the sky. It was about 5:00pm and you can see the sun start to set. I heard my cousins talk but I didn’t understand their lingo so I kept quite. I realize that they didn’t have shoes on and I thought that was weird but I never questioned it. They walked to the corner and told me to follow them, I checked to see if my mom was in the door before I ran towards them. We were playing “spit spit spit you are not it” when suddenly you hear a car suddenly press the gas a couple blocks down. So we all turn our head to the noise and then we raise the car was coming up their block, they yelled duck as if this was a routine for them. So I did, as I was ducking the car back door slides open and a body wrapped in a rug or blanket gets thrown out in front of us while the car was moving. As the body started to roll, the blanket or rug that he was in started to unroll with him. It happened so quickly that I didn’t realize what just happened. I started to smell an odd stench in the air and my head followed the smell. That's when I saw him. He was laying on the sidewalk, his body was as stiff as ice as if he had been dead for hours. The first thing I saw was the band wrapped on his upper arm, then I saw the holes on his arm, then I saw how thin he was and his teeth. While I was examining him from a distance, my cousins were jumping over him as if he was not human. The sun shone on his eyes and that’s when I saw them. They were the lightest blue eyes that I have ever saw. They looked like the sky on a sunny day, his eyes showed a different story. But before I could continue to look my mom had swooped me into her arms and cover my eyes. She took me straight home and didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Like Rat Kiley in “The things they carried” I wasn’t my funny self anymore, I become more dull towards the world because of seeing death. After seeing a dead body for the first time, I never looked at life the same again. Growing up I never really thought of death or anything beyond life, I never realized or acknowledge that death was real.

That night I asked my mom what happened to that man. “Nothing, he was just sick.” my mom said.

“Why didn’t he go to the doctors to get better?” I asked. “I don’t know, but don’t worry about.” she said. Being the child that I was I let it go. But as I got older, I started to realize what really happened to him. According to the investigating, the guy got high with his friends a couple blocks down and he OD. His friends didn;t want their block to get “hot” so they dumped the body a couple blocks down. All of that over drugs. At a young age almost every adult you meet says “Don’t do drugs kids”.  “But why” asked every kid. Some might have gotten a response back but most didn't because they were too young to understand. Some kids rebel and go against what their parents say and I feel like because they don’t know the real world consequence. If it wasn’t for that day, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. By the time I was in 8th grade, majority in my class either had sex, use drugs, drink, and steal. So many people tried to influence me but what had stopped me was the man, because it showed the the real long term consequence and not the happy and fun short term enjoyment.

But the most important lesson of all that the man taught me was that everyone dies. No one is promised to live a full life, no one is promised to live to see their kids get married and have grand kids, and at the end of the day. Rich or poor, you still end up in the same place. You can not cheat death, so yes live life to your fullest but don’t take advantage of you life and not waste it on short term enjoyment. The problem with today is that we care more about money than our lives because we were never shown about death and the ending for the cycle of life because it's ‘safer” to not show that dark part about humanity. It’s better to be reminded that you will die than because you don't take anything for granted than to be reminded that you are alive making you think you are invincible.

So thank you once again, for teaching me about life and the price that comes with it.

Sincerely,

The innocent bystander