Chris Lynch - Kill Switch

To think, I merely hated him up until now.

“No, it doesn’t,” I say.

He pulls up in front of the manky, desolate bus station, stops the car, reaches into his blazer pocket.

“Why do I want your card?”

“In case you need anything. Just give me a call. And maybe after you graduate, who knows, maybe I can find something for you. There is always a place for a bright young philosopher with hard-world experience, you know.”

I give Largs as cockeyed a look as I can manage. Then I tuck the card in my pocket once me and my belongings are out of his car.

Don’t forget me, will you? Da said.

How could I? I said. How could anyone forget you?

Ah, but you will, though. It’ll happen, probably quicker than you could know.

Not happening, Old Boy.

Don’t be stupid, Young Man. Be anything else but stupid. And it’s stupid to think you won’t forget. And it will happen to you, as well. Probably sooner than you could imagine. We all get forgotten. Don’t forget that.

He was right. By the time I got to school, all this was forgotten.

I made it. To the university, to freshmen week, which I remember almost nothing of, to philosophy.

I made it.

I got a roommate who is also philosophy and who smokes so much dope my computer giggles for ten minutes every time I open it up. He tells me all about his background on the sugar beet farm and I tell him all about mine, the summer camps and the horses and the high school archery team and my six-foot-two girlfriend, and he says “wow” a lot, and “cool,” and all the other stuff, the bumpy, prickly, complicated stuff is just lost in the fabulosity of my storytelling.

“What’s that bracelet thingy, dude?” he asks, taking my wrist and reading the inscription in the copper.

“It was a gift from my grandfather.”

“Wow. Cool. That’s deep, man.”

“That was him all right. Wow, cool, and deep.”

“Is there a story attached?”

“Nope.”

See that?

Right again, Old Boy.

All is forgotten.