Before I lived in my current apartment, I lived in an apartment complex that used to be a nursing home. It wasn’t so bad despite being filled with mostly old people. I only say that because I thought I would have a lot of noise complaints against me, but ad it turns out, I was pretty quiet most of the time.
The first few weeks kind of sucked because I had no furniture. I had to sleep on the hard floor. They had carpet, but it wasn’t very thick. I might as well have concrete floors, since there wasn’t much of a difference.
I woke up so sore. Most mornings it took me like 20 minutes just to stand. Sleeping on a floor with a steel hip did not mix at all. I ate all my meals on the floor too. Mostly just bologna sandwiches since I couldn’t afford much better while I was still getting settled in. It was cool though. I was just happy to get out of my Dad’s house.
It wasn’t until I was a few months in that I met Ian. Ian has Autism. He had to have a nurse check on him every night. He couldn’t go to the grocery store, or the library without his nurse with him. Despite all of that, he was one of the kindest souls that I ever had the pleasure of meeting.
Every morning, Ian would yell hi to me from across the room. No matter how far away he was from me. He would then proceed to show me this app on his phone. The app was actually really cool. When you spoke into it normally, it would say what you said backwards. You could also speak backward to it and it would speak back to you normally. He would show it to me every time he saw me. It didn’t bother me at all that he would sometimes show it to me 10 times a day. The reason for that is, I LOVE listening to someone talk about something that they are passionate about, or something that just makes them really happy. It just always makes me feel good to listen to that.
Ian would always tell me that I sound like this guy on a gaming channel on YouTube. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he swore up and down that I sounded like him. He always used to tell me that I was so well spoken and that I didn’t speak in Ebonics like most of the other black guys he knew. Ian had no filter.
I didn’t get mad or offended by this because I knew what he meant. I know he will probably never read this post, but in the off chance he does, I hope he knows how much he always brightened my days. I hope he knows that no matter how much he repeated himself, it didn’t matter because I would always listen.
I don’t see Ian anymore now that I live on a new apartment. That really sucks because these days I can use a pick-me-up. We need more people like Ian in the world. People who are just genuinely kind. I think the world would be a lot better. This is for you, Ian. Miss ya man.
-Valken
I AM CHAOS!!! 