My Life Line
I had been doing the same thing for a long time. School ..... home ..... school ..... home. I felt I was about to scream with the monotony. In the morning I could almost drive to school in my sleep. Then one day my friend Hank came and got me out of the rut. Hank is one of the most interesting people I have ever meet. A person from India isn’t used to the crazy weather we have here in Michigan. That man could stand on his feet and bend over backward putting his hands flat on the ground. I never asked him but I would be willing to bet he could make a snake come up out of a wicker basket from the sound of a flute. I never saw him go to the bathroom but I suppose in India you might not have to. Who knows, stranger things have happened....maybe. Anyway I owe a great deal to him. When my dad pulled up with him I thought Gandhi had risen from the dead. In broken English he said, “Hello, my name is Hank, nice to meet you.” I almost didn’t respond because I was laughing at a man named Hank from India had just come into my house, but I got out a , “very good, how are you?”He didn’t look like, act like, or even dress like an American, but with a name like Hank it was the only thing that would make sense to me. If his name had been Akbar or Jabar, it wouldn’t have been so strange for me. But Hank?...come on.
What were his parents thinking. It could start a tribal war or whatever those people in
India do for fun.
Although I was confused I shook his hand warmly. He continued on to his room
and I went back to watching TV.
Then I heard my dad talking to him. I normally don’t mind when I here my dad
talk but when people from other countries come he talks really loud. They aren’t
deaf but I guess he thinks the louder he talks the easier it will be for them to
understand. He was yelling, “HANK DO YOU WANT ANYTHING TO
EAT ? HOW ABOUT A SANDWICH WE HAVE DELI MEATS.” I was
thinking to myself, come on dad he’s not an idiot. How would you like it if you went
there and some guy starts screaming at you in a language you don’t know real well.
Eventually Hank came downstairs and got something to eat. The round of
questions came next, where are you from?, what have you seen?, how long are you
going to be in the U.S.? and he answered them with a dry sense of humor. You
could tell he had heard them all before and knew he would hear them all again. I felt
some strange bond with this man because, I have indured many rounds of
questioning by my father. Finally I could wait any longer, I had to ask him about his
name.
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