Kindness
Kindness is cheap y’all, but it’s everything — for realz!
My friend told me a frigging awesome story the other day. It was one I’d heard before, but that’s the shit happen when you been friends somebody almost thirty flipping years. You shut up and you listen again and get all the stuff you missed the last time. This story was about them being a hot little number of 19 years old in Spain, with a much older lover who taught them how to conjugate them Latin verbs and a few other tricks.
The occasion of the story, the seasoned lover had invited a mah fugging host of friends for a dinner party. It was the kind of shit people used to do back in the day, but now we just invite folks over to watch Game o’ Thrones or some shit, where nobody actually has to bring they A game. They had sheiks and poets and diplomats and all that kind of shit at this little whatever it was and my friend was kinda the guest of honor, ‘cause that’s what you did when you brought a new person into the fold. You invited all your peeps out to see who you was bringing into the family.
I know a bunch o’ y’all prolly taking this personally. Don’t. It’s not about you and it’s not about what we done lost as far as our ability to be truly social beings and to exist as part of a community. That shit has been part of the design for a long time. We gave up being part of a community (even being part of a family) so we could keep up with work and all the other responsibilities we been told are the important stuff. We forgot how to be kind (yeah, I’mma go ahead and speak for all of us, ‘cause I’m Notorious Pink and that’s just what I do!).
Anyway, in the middle of this gathering where my friend is getting showed off to the friends of their new Spanish BF, they are at the center of attention, butchering some Spanish, and being 19 years old as fuck. They are getting a little cocky and waving they arms all around (prolly a little drunk off the wine that’s been flowing free). They stand up to put the fine point on some story that ain’t call for all that and smacked the wine jug down the table, making the wrong kind o’ splash.
The sage lover, don’t miss a beat. He hollers out “¡Alegría!” (which means happiness for y’all mo’ fo’s don’t speak no Spanish). Then the guy dabs his fingers in the spilled wine, touches himself on the forehead, touches my friend on the forehead and then goes around the table baptizing everybody. He tells ‘em all what good luck it is and makes a frigging celebration of the whole thing. Not a beat missed: Kindness.
I’ll let y’all take what you want from it. Do take take something.
