Stick Man

Last Christmastime, E and I spent Christmas in Cleveland, OH living downtown.  When I say 'downtown' I mean literally down town, in between the two sports stadiums. The entire city of Cleveland for some reason, closes down at 5pm every night of the week.  It's the most annoying thing that you can do to someone living in a big city is take away the ability to do anything other than drink after 5.  If we wanted milk, we would have to hop into the car and drive about 10 miles out into the suburbs in order to get to a store that was open.  We would constantly ask ourselves why the city didn't want to be open at night and we would occasionally just wander out of the loft we were living in and just stand on the street and watch the locals go by.

There was this guy that would wander by every night.  Coolest guy ever.  He would go about 100 blocks from the city center and grab a few branches from trees and then as he walked back to the heart of Cleveland, he would carve the branches into walking sticks and then sell them for $20 - $40 to pay for food and tea and coffee and the like.  It's a brilliant idea, an easy way to make money and for E and I, it was a great way to get her dad a present.  E's dad loves hand crafted anything, and the idea that we knew the artist was perfect - pay him in advance for a walking stick and POOF, perfect Christmas gift for a good price.

So I paid Stickman in advance to make me a nice walking stick and he carved the most amazing face of a wizard with stars and rainbows and other flowery crap into this elaborate mosaic.  He asked if he could take it home and lacquer it a few times so that it would bring out the texture in the wood.  I wasn't sold on the idea of this, but, I was willing to go the extra mile here to get that perfect gift and I had his cell phone #, so it's not like he was going to escape or anything.  I mean, hey, the guy had his name in the paper for doing this, what could go wrong?

Death.  That's what can go wrong.

So the day before we are supposed to get the ultimate gift for Christmas, Stickman goes and dies.  I'm sitting in the loft grumbling to myself because now I'm out of ideas for what to get, I'm out $25 for a homeless man that was now no longer in need of money and it's probably in his back pocket at the funeral home.  The worst part is, is that I couldn't stop thinking about how I wanted to go to the funeral and before they put him in the ground be like "Hey, see the last thing that he was working on and that you are burying him with?  I own that. Pry open his hands and fork it over."  I know it's rude, but I couldn't stop thinking about it.  I remember thinking that it was totally unfair that the Grim Reaper had intervened to keep me from giving someone a nice gift.

Death.  It can be a jerk.