STORY: "US" AND "THEM" NO MORE - March Newsletter. 

      Among the stories I told recently when I spoke at an event of the Gay and Lesbian Center in Salt Lake City, is one that still makes me smile.  The theme I chose was "'Us' and 'Them' No More."

      Last November I was in Utah for performances of my play, "Facing East," (Mormon family deals with suicide of gay son).  Early Thanksgiving morning I left my hotel to walk to TRAX to take the local train to Sandy to meet my brother and daughter to travel to a family celebration.  The streets of Salt Lake City were cold and totally deserted except for an occasional street person.  As I hurried along, suddenly a young man approached me.  "I'm so sorry to bother you, but I'm trying to raise enough money to get a bus ticket so I can make it home for Thanksgiving.  The bus leaves at one, and my parents said they wouldn't give me any more money.  I'm trying to raise it one or two dollars at a time..."

      He didn't look scary or unkept, just a teenage boy.

      "Do you do this every day?" I asked.

      "No, no," he said.  "Honest, I just want to get a bus ticket home."

      Remembering how I would feel if this were my child, remembering a certain King Benjamin about our all being beggars, remembering that it was Thanksgiving, after all–I opened my backpack and got out the sum he needed for his bus fare from the little blue plastic box filled with cash from book sales from the theatre and handed it to him.

      "Oh, thanks!" he said in surprise.  "Wow.  Where are you from?  What do you do?"

      "I live in California.  I'm a writer."

      "You are?  I love poems!"

      "I write poems."

      "You do?"  His eyes widened in amazement.  Then–"Would you tell me one?"

      Would I tell him a poem?  Here on the cold streets of Salt Lake City in the early morning of Thanksgiving–would I tell this boy a poem?  Suddenly my reality shifted.  A moment ago we had been "us" and "them"–me a privileged woman who had never accosted someone on the street to ask for money, and him a boy who–for whatever reason–had at the moment no resources.  And then, in the time it took for him to say five words, all that had shifted.  We were two people who loved poems.

     "Sure," I said.  It would have to be a short poem, as I had to catch the train.  "Here's one that I have to tell myself every now and then.  I wrote the two parts of this tiny poem two years apart–the first section in the darkest time of my life, the second when things looked brighter.  'Drama in Two Acts.'

      "I dim

      I dim

      I have no doubt

      If someone blew–

      I would go out.

      I did not.

      I must be brighter

      Than I thought."

      "Ohhh.  Will you say it again?"

      I did.  Then I gave the boy a hug and made him promise that he will do whatever it takes to get into a position where he can take good care of himself and make a contribution to the world.

      I hurried down the street to catch the train–only to discover that, unlike BART in the Bay Area where I live, Salt Lake's TRAX does not run on holidays.  I called my brother in Sandy and asked him to come and get me.  It seems we all need help getting home for Thanksgiving.  As King Benjamin said, we are all beggars.  Finally there is no "us" and "them."

-Carol Lynn Pearson