Something new we did this year was a High School Writing Group with Malachi, Daisy, and me. We read a bunch of articles and essays, and took turns giving writing assignments and then reading and talking about our work. It was really wonderful. I loved seeing what the kids wrote, and getting a chance to practice my own writing too!
I need to ask Daisy for some of her essays and poems (she had some great ones), but I happen to have a couple of Malachi's essays saved in my files, so I will post them here for posterity:
His name was Mike Machete, although that’s not what his friends call him. Not to his face anyway.
He first approached me in that particular way that makes one wish to… escape notice. I didn’t want to flee in terror or scream for help or anything like that, just to briefly become irrelevant to the mountain of muscles and sweat walking toward me. He was likely in his sixties, with a few graying hairs on his mostly shaved head, though his age made his build more disconcerting not less. In each hand he held a 70 pound dumbbell which I can only guess he’d been doing lateral shoulder raises with.
I’m used to the way adults look down on teenagers in the gym, as if it’s insulting to have such small humans with such weak muscles even in the presence of adult body builders, but usually that only means we’re ignored when we’re waiting for a machine, or we’re scoffed at when we enter. Mike Machete, however, wanted to confront me directly.
“Gym’s busy today,” he noted, eyeing me and Luke, (and the exercise machine we had the impudence to occupy.)
I affirmed the point weakly, with a nervous giggle.
“People keep stealing my station every time I walk away,” he told us, and something about his inflection warned me against questioning this information’s relevance to me and Luke.
I gave him another giggle of agreement, signaling he’d persuaded me on this too.
“I figured I’d just do the workout with dumbbells instead,” he said, perhaps to justify the weights in his hands. As if he needed any justification.
Then, I followed his gaze to his “station,” the bench press at the corner of the room. It was still loaded with the meager 40 pounds Luke and I had been lifting before our migration to our current position, where we’d been intercepted by Mike Machete. I felt a spear of nervousness, and I would have given anything in that moment to dispose of the evidence that we’d been the ones who were last using the bench.
To my relief, he left us then, to return to his station. I call it his, because if you don’t use the entire station you’re clearly only borrowing it. Mike Machete, however, didn’t let a single available weight go to waste.
We ran into him again on our way out, and he seemed impressed with us. “I’m so tired of all the high schoolers that come here and don’t even work out,” he said. It is the greatest measure of my gym success that he didn’t include me and Luke in that category.
He introduced himself then. I accepted his handshake, and his hand enclosed mine completely, in the way a blood pressure machine encloses the bicep, and whether his hand was scarred, from the countless knife fights he’d survived with his bare hands, or merely calloused from daily workouts, I’ll never know.
“My friends just call me Mike,” he told us, in that particular way that implied that we would too, (at least to his face) and he hoped he wouldn’t ever be forced to instruct us otherwise.
Since then, we haven’t been ignored when we’re waiting for machines, and nobody ever scoffs when we enter Mike’s Gym.
***********
The Window
by Malachi Nielson
My first mistake was opening the window. I wasn’t paying much attention to the drive through at this point, but I’d seen the next car driving forward so I opened the window assuming it would arrive momentarily. It did not. The car in front of it didn’t leave quite enough space for the next car to line their window up with mine. But you must understand, once the drive through window is open, it seems beyond rude to close it and ignore the customer.
“Hi, how are you?” I asked, hanging my head out the window, looking in the direction of a bald man’s open window at least six feet away from me.
“Doing well,” came his distant reply.
We looked at each other across the distance between us. It wouldn’t have been a vast distance were either of us in a position to move closer, but as it was it might as well have been the Atlantic Ocean.
Surely the car in front of him will soon move, I thought. I began to read back his order, slowly, to give time for the drive through to move and bring the man into more natural proximity.
“You got… uh… one cheeseburger?”
“That’s right.”
“And there weren’t any fries or drinks on that order.”
“None.”
“Oh good, because I don’t have any here. I mean I could add them of course, but—”
“That’s all right, thank you.”
We eyed each other. This was the awkward part of the conversation. He was holding his credit card, and the car blocking his way didn’t seem any closer to moving. I ran some mental calculations. I wouldn’t be able to reach it. On the other hand, there’s only so much awkward silence a person can bear.
“I think I can reach,” I said.
The man’s eyes widened —whether in admiration or fear I could not tell. Wordlessly he stretched his hand out as far as he could. I leaned out of the window, but alas there was still a space between us. And so I was forced to wriggle forward hanging with one hand on the window while I stuck my entire torso out, until I felt his credit card in my hand.
Triumph washed over me, as I wriggled back through the window to charge him for his order. The glory of success made the return journey easier, and when the man once again held his card, we were both beaming. We’d done the impossible. It was as if we had bridged the great divide between man and God. And then I heard a sound.
I looked back to the card reader, to see it had printed a receipt.
“Do you want your receipt?” I asked.
“Yes, please.” He said. And the journey began again.
