Gifts When I was seventeen or so, I developed feelings for someone that did not feel the same way towards me. From what I'd learned in television and movies, it was the duty of the man to woo her with gifts of affection and romance. So my plan was this: I would drive out to her acreage in the middle of the night and leave her gifts on her doorstep each day of the week. Each gift was accompanied by a poem that I'd chosen for her, faux-aged with tea, rolled up, and tied with a nice red ribbon.

On Tuesday morning, she found a teddy bear. On Wednesday, a necklace. Thursday was chocolates and on Friday, there was just a note. It said to be at the end of her driveway at noon. Driving out to her home that day with a dozen roses on the seat beside me, I was as happy and hopeful as I'd ever been.

When I gave them to her, she lied. At the time, I thought she was being honest when she said she didn't want to date anyone. But later that night I found out that she started seeing someone later that day. I'd given her all these gifts that were expressions of how I truly felt, and she gave me the gift of insincerity. Months later, she tried to take it back. I'd already lost it.  ¶ 5:23 AM

  Tea For Two One day back in February, I wanted something to read, so I went to a nearby book store. There was a woman working there that I saw when I walked in. Beautiful dark hair, a smile so full it must have contained everything. Me, I was dressed poorly. Clothes I'd pulled out of the laundry, unshowered, my favourite sweat-stained cap. I walked around that store for a while trying to find the right book, hoping to time it so that she would be working at the register when I went to pay. I wanted to ask her for tea, for coffee, for anything. Instead, I paid her and left. I planned to return there another time when I was more presentable.

She was not there the next time I returned. But now, several months later and through completely unrelated circumstances, we've had tea. And as fate would have it, it was her that asked me.  ¶ 5:51 PM

  Verbully Growing up as a naively tough kid, I did my share of ignorant things to feel better about myself. One of those things was to insult a classmate who lived nearby. He was a few years younger and had skipped a grade when he transferred to my school. He was overweight, intelligent, and in every way undeserving of anything I said of him. But when I found out that he was adopted, for some reason I said that his mother didn't love him.

His mother, already over-protective, called my house when he came home in tears that day. I did not want her to speak to my mother, so I pressed the handset down on the cradle gently, then picked it back up. She was still there. So I unplugged the telephone from the wall, then ran upstairs to unplug the one in the office too. But it was ringing. And by the time I got there, they were talking.

When we are ashamed of something we've done, sometimes we spend more effort trying to hide it than simply to face it. When you spend all your time covering your tracks, you make no progress forward.  ¶ 6:03 AM

  Good Friend Waiting This was the night I went to an out-of-control house party. Some young pup said it was advertised on local punk message boards, so there were kids of all ages and drugs of all sorts. Me, I had my usual two bottles of pre-mixed whiskey, that way I couldn't drink more than I should. Someone else would have benefited from that same forethought.

While local hardcore punk bands raged in the basement, some kid no older than 12 was being fed drink after drink by some older guys. He had a friend with him that he wouldn't listen to, a friend that couldn't find him later on. He looked everywhere, asked everyone. I didn't know where the kid had gotten to either.

Later on, when the crowd first began to thin, someone found the kid passed out behind a couch. His friend was sitting next to him, patient, keeping the troublemakers away. Sometimes the best thing a friend does isn't even noticed.  ¶ 7:59 AM