Meeting Paris
I was about 8 years old when I met Paris. My family had just moved to Hayward, from Sacramento, from Hawaii where we had lived while my father was in Vietnam. I'd been put in yet another new school just down the hill from our new home. It was the weekend, and I went down the hill to inspect this new place of confinement: It had a playground with a jungle-jim open to the street. After playing on the jungle-jim for a while, a little girl appeared who seemed just as bored as I was: It turned out to be Paris Marie. I don't recall her ever getting closer than ten feet from me, but we started talking. As bored kids do, we eventually got around to throwing rocks at each other, not in a mean, angry way, just as something to do to kill time. We talked, laughed, and threw rocks at each other. Then one of the rocks I threw hit Paris on her leg. It wasn't a very big rock, but none the less she screamed in pain. She said she thought her leg was broken as she sat crying (Sh*t! I broke a little girl's Leg?!) I said something like "No way! Are you saying I broke your leg with that tiny little rock from twenty-five feet away?!" she said yes, would I please go get her mother at the their house, which was just right outside the gates of the school? Well, yes, I said I would. Now I was in for it. I'd hurt a little girl. I thought about just slinking away: she didn't know my full name or where I lived. But... No. There was a little girl in pain; I went and told her family. It turned out later that the reason her leg really was broken was because of a tumor: a cancerous tumor that had been undetected before I threw that rock. They later said I'd given her another seven years of life by throwing that rock.
The next time I saw Paris was at a old abandoned gas station at an abandoned rock quarry just above my house and up the hill from Paris' house. She and several of her friends had climbed the hill, exploring, a month or so after her surgery. I knew none of this, or about the cancer, I had just faded away as the Chinese Firedrill occured as her large family had come to the schoolyard to care for their youngest, stricken little girl.
Paris had climbed all the way up the hill on crutches: you see, they had amputated that leg, the leg that I broken, because of the cancer. So, here I was confronted by the little 7-year-old girl, who's leg I had broken months before: and it appeared they'd had to cut off her leg because of me! You can imagine how horrified I was, how guilty I felt. I said I was sorry, and begged her forgiveness. That was when she said it wasn't my fault: it was the cancer. CANCER! a HORRIFYING, terror-inspiring, stigmatizing word! For that reason, and many others I wanted to have nothing to do with this pretty little girl. What would follow was her seven-year-long battle with that dread disease, and my seven-year-long battle NOT to fall in love with Paris. We both lost our battles.
The next time I saw Paris was at a old abandoned gas station at an abandoned rock quarry just above my house and up the hill from Paris' house. She and several of her friends had climbed the hill, exploring, a month or so after her surgery. I knew none of this, or about the cancer, I had just faded away as the Chinese Firedrill occured as her large family had come to the schoolyard to care for their youngest, stricken little girl.
Paris had climbed all the way up the hill on crutches: you see, they had amputated that leg, the leg that I broken, because of the cancer. So, here I was confronted by the little 7-year-old girl, who's leg I had broken months before: and it appeared they'd had to cut off her leg because of me! You can imagine how horrified I was, how guilty I felt. I said I was sorry, and begged her forgiveness. That was when she said it wasn't my fault: it was the cancer. CANCER! a HORRIFYING, terror-inspiring, stigmatizing word! For that reason, and many others I wanted to have nothing to do with this pretty little girl. What would follow was her seven-year-long battle with that dread disease, and my seven-year-long battle NOT to fall in love with Paris. We both lost our battles.
