Campfyre Stories

Every day I meet new people.  Every year I meet new friends.  Every so often those people drift out of my life.  Usually it’s a natural occurrence, we lose interest, call or see each other less often, put less effort into maintaining the friendship we used to have.  Less frequently it is a sudden, serious situation.  There is some kind of trigger that ends the friendship.  I’ve certainly experienced both.

I suppose the biggest difference is that when it’s a natural progression, there remains the possibility of renewing that friendship.  Rarely has that happened to me; usually what happens is we make the effort and realize that we had run out of things to say or that our lives had turned such vastly different corners that we no longer had anything in common.  I think that the people I could renew a lost friendship with are those who simply drifted away and I wouldn’t even know how to begin trying to find them again, but honestly, we were losing interest in each other anyway.

Sometimes it is just too hard.  Sometimes it is just too sad.  Sometimes everything is one-sided and you just can’t put that effort in anymore.  I’ve been on both sides of a lot of different reasons for it.

Sometimes, though, it is downright destructive.  Sometimes when you flee from it, it follows you.  Sometimes it haunts you, sometimes it stalks you, sometimes it just lies in wait and ambushes you at the least opportune time.

At least, that’s how it feels.

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I often find that memorable things that have been said to me come back at appropriate times.  Winter, especially snowy, icy winter, is when I think of Rufus, a Liberian man I worked with probably around 11 years ago now.

He was a nice enough man with an accent I had not heard before.  A hard worker and a kind soul, but not overly memorable.  There are a lot of people I used to work with, in that same place, whose names I don’t remember or whose faces I can no longer recall, but Rufus is someone who will always stand out from that time for me, simply from uttering a phrase.

Our parking lot was gravel and we were in SE Michigan.  When it snowed or iced, the parking lot became downright treacherous, but even worse was the transition from the gravel lot to the smooth, unfinished wooden porch area.  Working the latest shift, we’d often find ourselves leaving work or heading out for lunch in the worst of ground conditions and, because it was the middle of the night, there was no one on site to salt or plow or anything.

Much of the time, people would walk out in pairs, holding onto each other in some hope of stability, but in reality, just taking the other one down with them.  We (all) would find ourselves at various times, just watching people try to get back and forth between the cars and the warehouse.  It was our primary source of winter entertainment while at work.

I never fell, though.  Sure, I slipped and slid, but I never hit the ground in that parking lot.  I took careful, calculated steps and didn’t let anyone hold on to me and pull me down.  People would watch and catcall (all in good fun), but I never did fall on the ice.  (When there wasn’t ice…  or mud…  and the ground was clean and dry…  that’s when I would and still do fall.)  But it wasn’t even that I didn’t fall, it was that I still moved pretty quickly and I didn’t skate across the ice, I picked my feet up off the ground and I walked.

Since I wasn’t any good for slapstick amusement, I became the go-to girl when people forgot something in their car.  I think that part of it was that they were waiting for that moment when I would fall…  that I would finally be "one of them" in that particular aspect. 

One day, Rufus was walking very slowly through the parking lot on his way in.  I had started several rows behind him and was about to pass him.  I slid…  and recovered and kept walking without actually breaking my stride.  He chuckled and said, "You walk like a buffalo."  I, not being from Liberia, was not sure how to take this statement…  was it a compliment, or an insult?  He explained that it meant sure-footed.  That in Liberia to walk like a buffalo is to never lose your balance, to never fall in the mud.  I suppose they don’t get a whole lot of ice in Liberia, but I suppose it translates.

Whenever I walk in icy, slick conditions now I think of Rufus and walking like a buffalo.  And, you know, I rarely fall (when the conditions are slippery).