A weird, cool thing happened to me earlier today. I was walking down the street, wondering whether I was hungry enough to get something to eat, when I passed by two guys sitting on a porch. One of them shouted out to me, "Hey, excuse me! Excuse me! Where are you from?”
A bit surprised, I answered, "Uh, just down the street.”
“Whoa! Down the street? I haven’t seen you before.”
“Yeah, just down the street,” I said as I pointed down the street.
He then said: “Hey, I gotta ask you something. Just a second. Just a second.” He sprang to his feet and came up to me, but not threateningly, like a kid who was excited to say something. He looked to be in his mid-20s, and the other guy still sitting on the porch about 40.
"Hey, I feel like you came here to help me,” he said.
"Yeah?”
"Yeah, man. I feel like you came here now to help me,” he said.
“Uh, okay… What do you need help with?”
He became even more excited and tossed the cell phone and sweatshirt he was holding on the grass. "Well, I got so many bad things happening to me. I got a lot of problems, man.”
"Yeah, me too,” I said. "What's going on?"
"I got problems. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do?”
I just told him what I felt like telling him at that moment, something about the universe and not getting too attached to anything, especially not people. He periodically repeated what I had just said, as a question, and I just nodded. After about three minutes, I had finished, and he nodded some more and said:
"Wow. Wow. I knew you came to help me.” And he gave me a hug.
He asked, "Hey, what's your name?” And I told him. He said, all excited, "Like the archangel!" (I had never heard that one before.)
“Yep, like the archangel,” I said.
He said: "Gabriel, God bless you, man! God bless you.” I said the same thing, and we parted.
Later, when I was walking back home on a different street, I heard someone shout, "Hey, Gabriel.” I squinted a bit and recognized the same guy. He was walking with another friend. He stopped for a second and said, “Gabriel, thanks, man. We're just out chillin', messing about. God bless you, man.” We didn’t have much else to say and parted again.
— Gabriel Fenteany, October 11, 2015
