7 phrases that changed my life

7 phrases that changed my life
A short story

By Matt Langford

Phrase #1 – Causing a moment of curiosity

“Get out of the road you fucking nutter.” A van driver. Such hatred. Such bile. Justifiable – because of the engine and the wheels.

I can’t say what it was specifically that caused me turn and watch the dented white transit limp from the scene that was about to unfold. The cruelty in the demand? The venom with which it was spat? Or the reason for the splurge … a vomit of a demand made against … who?

This was the first of the seven phrases that changed my life.

The reason for such vitriol was stood in the middle of busy set of traffic lights. He appeared to me as we’d all expect all people like him to look. Skinny. Oversized clothes bought (well, more likely stolen … or contributed) long ago. The long hair. The coal-dusted face blanketed by a beard. I know these faces well. We all do.

Phrase #2 – Causing a moment of fear. Then anger.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” said the figure in the road. The voice – ice-cold; ancient like a gnarled oak. Fractured. Spoken to some illusion deep within his pot-holed mind. Cold and enclosed.

It occurred to me that he was obviously mad. Unbalanced at best. I felt cold … being this close to someone who, potentially, could run across the road and start … I don’t know what. Screaming at me? Worse? Or he could run into the traffic and jump in front of a car … a lorry. He could make a killer of somebody – some poor average guy doing a decent days’ work.

Anger struck me. My mind fizzed – the
unfairness of it. He shouldn’t be out here. He shouldn’t bringing his … abnormality? Yes … his abnormality to us. He should be keeping between him and his grotty, festering room.

A room paid for by me, the lorry driver … the rest of us.

Phrase #3 – Causing shock and the start of pity

“Don’t do this,” he said, poking a bulge in his coat pocket. “Don’t do this.” Such fear. So detached. Not at all like the rest of us. Opted out. Gone. Unsubscribed. But so afraid.

It hit me that he meant no harm to anyone else. Yes – he was terrified. Yes – he was mad. No – he didn’t care about the public faces around him (all looking like mine, I’m sure).

So now he was vulnerable. Now he was alone.

I needed to be elsewhere … performing my normality … my day-to-day functions. But I couldn’t move. I needed to see how this all ended.

Phrase #4 – Causing void

“Not now,” he said, still poking at the bulge in his coat pocket. “Not now.” My turning point. This whole scene … this performance (for this is what it was) was a mantra – his method of self-awareness.

I emptied. Nothing remained. I knew, then, that this man was in no plight. He wasn’t asking for help or offering aggression. He was merely making himself a starting point. A reboot. He probably went through the whole performance every day in order to refresh whatever passed for his emotional grounding.

I don’t know how I knew this. Maybe the look of calm in his face. Fear remained in his eyes. But there was calm in his face. Neither of us cared about the wave of insults and cat-calling that had erupted now the traffic lights had changed. Nor the group of people who had gathered on the opposite corner to me. They wanted blood. They wanted entertainment … reality TV style (instant, gratuitous, disposable).

Phrase #5 – Causing rebirth of a dusty word

“It’s ok. It’s ok. I’m here. You’re safe.” A stranger. His hand rests lightly on the man’s shoulder. His eyes aren’t sorry. His eyes aren’t pitiful. He isn’t doing this to be helpful or benevolent. He hates the man’s smell … he despises the dirt now on his hand.

The stranger kept looking up at the group of watchers on the corner. He was frustrated. He was cross with them – cross with the man. It hit me that his actions were of an old-fashioned type. A disused word – a show of something that has fallen into what we might consider to be lame.

Kind. He was merely being kind. Not to the man. He knew and I knew that no act could save this man. He was lost. Broken. No amount of repair or spare parts would get him back to how he might have been once. No – he was being kind to the group. He was being kind to me.

He didn’t want us to act out. He didn’t want our prejudice, our mistrust of the unusual, to boil over and drag out our savagery – that percentage of horror that exists in us all. It perpetrates lies … it ignores war and holocaust.

Phrase #6 & #7 – Causing smiles and laughs.

So how did I change? Why am I so different now to how I was 2 minutes prior to the 6th phrase of this short, irrelevant scene? Was it the re-discovery of kindness? The realization that we all exist on the verge of hate? A new found tolerance? No. None of these things. No one encounter can cause such radicalism. No person is so reactionary.

I was able to smile. Because of what the man, dripping in his own madness, was able to say to the benevolent stranger.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Crying. Weakness. He suddenly reached into the bulging pocket. The crowd oozed a sense of panic. Somebody screamed. Another squealed something about a gun. But nothing bad happened. I knew by now nothing would. He pulled out a sheaf of battered and old … if was hard to see from my distance. A book? A pile of old letters?

The relief from the people around was palpable and strangely irritating. Relief … and disappointment.

All the while the stranger remained calm, his hand still on the man’s shoulder, a comforting smile fixed on his face.

And then all became clear. The man uttered his final phrase …number 7. And my change was complete. My lessons learned.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” Falling to his knees. “Merry Christmas.” He offered the pile of papers – and the stranger started smiling. He touched the papers … and started laughing. “They’re Christmas cards! They’re Christmas cards!” He said. He laughed so hard … even the disheveled human, so long disassociated from normal humor, couldn’t help but smile. After some time his shoulders began to shake. Something about all this filtered through his crumpled mind and poked away at some long buried emotion – and he remembered to laugh about it.

I watched this scene – two strangers (one mad and tragic, the other kind and on his way somewhere to … do something normal) shaming a group of cruel, beaten crows. They laughed at themselves. They each looked at the other – one kneeling in the road, the other standing over him – and laughed at each other. Most miraculously of all, as disgruntled voyeurs shuffled away, and just as revving drivers were readying their curses, the man opened himself… and the stranger stooped and fell into the outstretched arms of the fallen human.

The traffic lights changed to red.

Me? I smiled at the July sky and thought of holly, Christmas tress, the smell of tinsel and roast turkey with cranberry jelly. I wiped my eyes … and started laughing along with these two polarized characters laughing like children at a pile of old Christmas cards in the middle of a busy road. The stranger turned and opened his arms to anyone who wanted to join in.

I watched. And laughed.

Time passed. We laughed until time told we simply had to get on with our business. For some of us it was work. Other errands. But for the man with the maddened mind he would go off and look at his Christmas cards … leaving me to wonder who on Earth would want to send him something so personal, so normal? Or were they from his old life? Who knows?

So … what did I learn? How did my life change because of these seven phrases?

This is only life, afterall.