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Three Stories, Two Funny, One Tender, and Hard
Formulas for remembering.
Bear with me, I want to tell you three stories, two funny, one tender, and hard.
I’m going to call him Jim, which of course was not his name, but he is not here to give me permission to share his stories.
A few years back, I was working long nights at an emergency shelter — it had been cold and wet and snowy and we had been running long hours for weeks. The night before I had caught Jim — an an elderly man who wore combat boots and, often, overalls, with a big bottle of Aristocrat vodka, the kind in the plastic bottle, sneaking swigs in his cot. I didn’t not understand, I know addiction to be a beast, but I told him it was against the rules and I had to keep it in my office for him until he left in the morning. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to take things that were against the rules from Jim.
So when Jim came in this one particular night, his small backpack was bulging and I said “Jim, is there anything I need to know about in your bag?” He shrugged and so I asked again. He held his bag out to me. “Can I look?” “Sure, go ahead,” he said.
I opened the backpack. There were papers and some clothing on top and everything was very wet. I moved them aside to find more very wet items. I noticed the bag was dripping from its…
