Kenny Was a Friend to All

A Meditation

Of all things, a review of Guardians of the Galaxy III brought this episode from my life to mind, particularly the point that

Apollo's Lyre

made about intelligence not being the measure of all things. I agree totally. Read the review.

Kenny lived a few houses up from my mom’s house, or at least I think he did.  I never knew for sure or inquired.  I didn’t know his last name, or exactly what was wrong with him; the polite phrase I learned growing up for such people was ‘slow,’ which covered a range of mental debilities. And Kenny was certainly slow.

He lived with his father, though he looked to be in his late thirties, and did odd jobs around the area for his income.  His father would drive him around to mow lawns and weed gardens, things like that.  I would see him from time to time, whenever I visited my mom while I was in college, or when I stayed over to work at a nearby restaurant on weekends.  I hated my job but it was better than Kenny’s, who was always sweaty and tired-looking.  I might wave to him in passing; I don’t think I ever talked to him.  I wouldn’t have known what to say.

I mention that I hated my job.  Waiting tables is awful for a solitary-minded person who dislikes small talk.  The work is physically and emotionally demanding, an abusive grind filled with people who purchase the right to distain you along with their steak and pommes frites.  I read books in the break room and looked past it all, though, dreaming of graduating college and becoming a real intellectual.  I mention that I stayed with my mom sometimes.  It was most of the time really, as the job paid little and gas to go to school wasn’t cheap.  Most of my friends already had their own places.  I told myself I was aiming for higher things.

My college was not distinguished, and most of the time I was the only one in class who cared, but it meant something to me.  I wasn’t like the other waiters, the lifers, who would never have any other kind of job.  I didn’t get high and drunk after work (or before and during the shift as was also common).  I didn’t have those vices.  I exercised, ran and lifted.  And of course I always read.  I could always tell myself I was passing through, this was just the means to an end, and I didn’t belong in an apron and polyester tie.

Once a group of professors came in as a large party to which I was assigned.  Several of them began discussing a sermon from the 4th century and were collectively trying to recall who had delivered it.  As I poured water for a woman professor I interjected that I had read the work they had just mentioned and the preacher was John Chrysostom.  They looked at me with sudden bemusement, as if a monkey had offered the solution.  It was a funny thing for someone like me to know.  I still remember that look.  The woman with the water was polite and engaged me in a brief conversation, and told me I should apply to their school, that I would do well there.  I didn’t reply that I had applied already and been speedily rejected.  I just smiled and refilled their glasses.  I remember they tipped well, so there’s that.

Kenny didn’t have the luxury of air conditioning and offering Late Antique minutiae to pleasant academics.  His life was Biblical toil- thorns and thistles for him, and the plants of the earth were his food.  If he complained I never heard it, but then, I didn’t really know him.  What would I have to say to him?

Our lives intersected at exactly one point.  One afternoon, as I sat on the couch, probably getting ready to go to work at the restaurant, I heard a loud knock at the back door.  No one ever knocked on that door- the backyard faced the woods- and at first I thought it might be a burglar or some kid.  But as I approached the window I could already make out Kenny’s distinctive slouching, potbellied frame, and I remembered that he had been cutting grass one house over.  I opened the door.  Without saying hello, Kenny asked me for a glass of water.  He was covered in sweat and bits of grass and straw were stuck to his skin and clothes.  He was red from the sun and looked tired.  I went to the kitchen, got him a glass of water, and gave it to him. He downed it immediately.  I asked if he wanted more and he said no.  He walked away, back to his labors.  I watched tv for a while and left for my shift.  It was the first and last time we ever spoke.

Some time after that, after I had been away at school for a while, I returned to my mom’s house, and she told me some sad news.  Kenny, it seems, was not able to be left alone.  He had been more disabled than I’d imagined.  A few nights earlier he’d somehow gotten out of his house without his father knowing and wandered into the four-lane highway they lived along.  He had been struck by a car and killed.

It was that same day, or the day after, when I stopped at the gas station up the road on the way to work.  I had seen Kenny doing odd jobs there many times. I went in to pay, and there on the counter was one of those charity collection cans, this one featuring a black and white picture of Kenny, smiling.  The caption read: “Kenny was a friend to all.”

I want to remember putting some money in. I think I did.  But what I recall most clearly is how those words affected me.  Something about that simple, stark line of praise for the departed.  They were warm words for Kenny, but they burned in my mind like hot coals.  It hurt me to think about the smile on his face in that grainy picture, all the world had left of him. I sat in my car for a long time. I just stared at the ugly front wall of that convenience store, choking up.

Kenny was a friend to all.  That’s more than I am, and more than I’ll ever be.  I’m smarter than Kenny was.  I’m smarter than the people I worked with at the restaurant, smarter than the people who bossed me around, smarter than my classmates.  I worked hard to be smart.  And one day I’ll stand before God and He’ll ask me the only question that matters to Him.

“What do you do for My friend Kenny?”

Kenny really was a friend to all.  I can’t say I was his friend, but he was mine.  He came to my door not to ask but to offer.  Giving him that glass of water was the most worthwhile thing I did in my entire youth.  Thank you, God, for sending him my way.

I am not a believer in blank slates.  We all have gifts; some set apart to become strong, some smart, some even-tempered, industrious etc.  Some are all these things, some, sadly, none of them.  We can build on our gifts, or through force of will overcome a lack of them, but though I worked hard at learning, I firmly believe my potential was God-given.  As such, it is not mine to use for my own ends, but rather for the purposes of the one who gave it to me.  God’s command is not that we understand the mysteries of the universe, but that we love one another, something Kenny understood long before I did.  Pray for me in my pridefulness, and remember Kenny, who is in a better place