Let's drink a toast to all those who arrived alive
Mario S. walking through the shoppers’ mall, like an anchor of familiarity in a sea of the terrible unknown. “Oh, hey what’s up,” he greets me, recognizing my face. It’s always funny seeing Mario, because he’s fairly ubiquitous within the greater upstate area, and I always do end up seeing him in the most bizarre places imaginable, while doing nothing particular at all. The whole anchor-of-familiarity paradigm is probably lost on Mario, however, given that he seems to know everybody, and it’s probably more of a testament to his imagined magnetism which always tricks you into thinking you’re the anchor. We talk things over a bit and I tell him that I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and how I need something to wear. “Wedding’s are the worst,” he says, “I always tell my friends: ‘listen, motherfuckers: you know where I work, I can’t afford no present.’” We have a laugh at that, and then he continues to explain to me that weddings are akin to receiving a speeding ticket, an expense which you can’t afford. I misconstrue the original statement by adding that it would be more like a speeding ticket that comes with dinner and dancing, but Mario insists that it’s a speeding ticket all the same. And it’s weird how one of the most important days in two people’s lives becomes little more than an overwhelming chink in your well-constructed plans for the weekend. My formalwear situation is little less than happening, and the whole fact that two people younger than me are getting married elicits in me some kind of existential panic which just won't go. But ah, well: what can you do? Some people have to have lives which suggest that things are OK, and that it’s not all horrible and grim. And the food will be really good, probably. So that’s something, at least.

I walk out of the mall with Mario, past the pesky miscreant factions which seems to assemble by the entryways, which is somehow very logical hanging out corridors for 15-year-olds nationwide. I point out my car to Mario, which resides in a very choice spot, close to the entryway. He has no idea where his own car is in the interminable sea of similar-looking cars and then tries to remember if it’s even in this lot at all. We both shrug, and then say goodbye, until the next time. On the service road out, I see that Mario has found his own car, as he whips by me at impossible speeds, with his inimitable afro poking up above the driver’s seat, in full view of passersby.