We Create Memories

I start off the day watching big choppy waves crash and spray over the sea guard, cars splashing through the overspill, the rocks, sharp and jagged the previous day, obscured beneath the swirling mass. It's 9am and I walk by the sea in a pin-stripe suit and pink shirt, three girls gulping white lightning from the plastic bottle double take at me and back to the bottle. I take one more look at the splashing sea and get a cab to the airport. Forty minutes later I'm flying over the green blue sea, leaving the island to it, unsure as to the difference I made. That evening I find myself in Putney. I approach a table of twelve, one of whom is a down-syndrome kid called Charlie. He wears a green bowtie and an ice white shirt, not a crease to be seen. I'm ten minutes in and these people love me, they scream, cheer, clap and ovate. Now I move my focus to Charlie, and he becomes the Magician, the star, with a little assistance from me he performs miracle after miracle, basking in his new found glory and wonder, almost choking with laughter. Finally the card he signed 'charlie' on in neat curly letters appears in a bottle, everyone at the table signs it for him, I put a big sticker on it for him and he leaves clutching it. The father tells me he cannot thank me enough, and he is right, I have given this kid a memory he will never forget, a moment to treasure for his lifetime and that is priceless. Life is shit, but sometimes we get to light up the darkness, no matter how unworthy of that we may be.