Disappointment

  It’s a fickle thing; that disappointment, however, it seems to be inevitable. They tell us growing up that we can expect to see it throughout adulthood. Being told to expect disappointment and actually feeling it are two very different things. I can’t remember the first time that I let somebody down or likewise when they did it to me, but I can remember several occasions since then where the feeling was alive and well. Recently I seem to be establishing a strong relationship with that unwelcome stranger known as Disappointment. I hear people talk about how everything in their life is going wrong and even though I’ve been there before, I now struggle to understand that feeling. I’m an optimist. After years of living as a pessimist and succeeding at nothing, I somehow slowly changed my outlook on life. That being said, a recent chain of events and several run-ins with my old pal “Disappointment” is now responsible for my teeter-totter relationships with Optimism. Some days I feel that the weight of the world is resting quite comfortably on my shoulders, showing no clear indication of moving on.

  When I was around 10 years old my family moved down South for my father’s job. We moved into a modest house with not so modest fruit trees in the back yard that left their rotten fruit all over the grass, leaving me little room to play in my own yard I quickly ventured out to the front yard. I was surprised to see a not so little girl with fire red hair sitting in the yard next to ours. She was jumping around and talking to herself, which frightened me at first, but fear quickly turned to interest. She spotted me staring at her and she introduced herself as “Jennifer.” “I am 8 and I love animals,” she said. She seemed a little strange to me, but something about her was familiar and I instantly felt like I could be myself. Jennifer’s family cooked HUGE country dinners with fried chicken crunchies, homemade mashed potatoes and rivers of gravy. Whenever I ate dinner with them I could eat as much as I wanted and nobody ever said a word about me getting fat. I was a skinny kid, but for some reason my mother was obsessed with me staying that way. (much to her disappointment, puberty changed my body and petite was no longer a personal descriptive word) Anyway, Jennifer’s grandmother taught me how to cook, sew, and she even made me my own quilt. I went to her house everyday morning and stayed until dark every night. She was easily described as my best friend and we were both upset that when the Summer ended we would no longer be together all day because I was two grades above her.

  Our first day of school, Jennifer was running behind so I went to the bus stop alone. The other kids said hello and we seemed to get along better than I had expected. I watched across the street for Jennifer’s door to open and when it finally did I was surprised to hear the other children laughing. You see Jennifer’s grandmother was a fine seamstress and she always made all of Jennifer’s clothes. There were no labels indicating where they were purchased and that instantly put Jennifer at the lower end of the caste system of our neighborhood. Even though the clothes were quite beautiful she never stood a chance of being accepted. I locked eyes with her and she smiled at me, I heard a voice in the distance say, “look its cow-bell.” Apparently the other kids had noticed that Jennifer was big and they weren’t nearly as nice about it. She walked towards me with a defeated look on her face and as the bus rolled up I made the biggest mistake of my 10 year old life, I walked away from my best friend. That day I received a hard lesson in disappointment, it always hurts.

  I spent the entire school day hoping that when I got back on the bus that I would see Jennifer and I would do the right thing. When the day finally came to a close I saw her on the bus, but she was sitting and laughing with another little girl. I sat alone and when we got off at our stop Jennifer walked home without saying a word. I ran after her and finally in her front yard she said her peace. She told me that waiting until nobody was around to be her friend was not the kind of friendship that she wanted, and I swore to never let her down again. I never did. Jennifer and I played together everyday that year, but we also played with the rest of the neighborhood. She was always a little bit different and I always loved that about her. At the end of that school year her parents decided to move the family to Georgia and saying goodbye to her was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I was disappointed when she left and even though I made some of the best life long friends from that neighborhood, I will always remember Jennifer as being my first experience of real Southern Comfort. So maybe there’s a bit more Optimism left here after all.