Everyone needs a friend. We need someone who’ll set everything down when we need a hand.We need someone who’ll listen and listen until we feel better.We need someone who will accept us for who we are, warts and all, and still love us. Ye, we all need a friend. That’s the kind of friend I want to be. A young girl teaches us about friendship in short Vimeo video. Enjoy!
The Deer Whisperer from Brad Herring on Vimeo.
I open the door to La Flor’s room. She’s lying on her bed in a fetal position, her pillow covering her head. Her iPad blaring blues music.
“La Flor* what’s wrong?” I said.
Her muffled voice said, “I don’t want to talk, Ray. Leave me alone go away.”
“No, I am not going to leave you alone until you talk to me. I want to know what’s wrong. You are not a blues music kind of girl. You walk and talk with the beat of life kind of girl. Now get out of the fetal position and let’s go into the kitchen and have some coffee and talk about whatever is bothering you.”
Grudgingly, Flor untangled herself from her fetal position and sat up on the edge of the bed.
I took a look at her and said, “I think you should go to the bathroom and freshen up a bit.”
“Do I look that bad?” La Flor’s eyes raised to meet mine.
“Yes,” I answered. I knew right away, I said the wrong thing. It’s a species thing. I got to work on it.
“Are you going to put that in the blog? I don’t want my readers thinking I had a bad look.”
“Too late, it’s already in,” another male faux pax.
La Flor rose from the bed, went to the bathroom, turned to me, and said, “Is there any ice cream left? What about the chocolate cake? I think there were couple Fudgsicles left.”
“You cleaned up the ice cream. You licked the crumbs from the one-third of chocolate cake that was left until the plate. The Fudgsicles sticks have no chocolate stain on them.”
“Can you send out for pizza?”
“You can’t eat your way through this.”
“I can try.”
“Do you know how much weight you will gain if you keep this up?”
“If you’re good friend, you will write that no matter how much I eat I don’t gain an ounce.”
“I’m a good friend, but not that good of a friend. You’ve got to get control of yourself. Now go freshen up and we’ll talk.”
“10 minutes later I knocked on the bathroom door, “La Flor you have to come out of the bathroom.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to face the world.”
“I don’t have anything to live for.”
“Coffee and a snack are ready for you.”
The bathroom door opened. La Flor stepped out. I gave her a smile. She walked past me into the kitchen.
We sat at the table. La Flor and I both have filled coffee mugs in front of us.
“Where is my snack?” she said.
I walked to the refrigerator and brought out a small bowl of blackberries and strawberries.
La Flor stared at them, then said, “At least you could have had chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate covered blackberries.” She got up, went to the cupboard and pulled out a jar of peanut butter.
I said, “Okay La Flor, spill the beans what is it, I have a feeling it is guy trouble.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“No, I could hardly tell anything was bothering you.”
“I do hold my feelings well.”
“Yeah, it was a wild guess on my part,” I said.
“I got an email from Jack.”
“And, what did Jack say?”
“He said he was thinking of getting a court order to have me cease-and-desist from stalking him.”
“Were you stalking him?”
“No, I was not stalking him. He mistook my 300 texts a day as stalking. And, only 100 texts each day were selfies so he wouldn’t forget me.”
“It appears that your relationship is over. Look in the mirror, you are Leflore, beautiful, tough, and edgy, PI.”
La Flor pulled the teaspoon full of peanut butter away from her lips and smiled. She said, “Ray, you are right. He’s getting to be old-school. I’ve got to set my sights higher. He probably goes to bed at 9 o’clock. My day is just beginning at that time.”
“You’re a night owl.”
“That’s when the action starts, Ray.” La Flor looked over to the trash basket and said, “Did you eat all the cake and ice cream? You didn’t save me a Fudgsicle? I have a suggestion for you.”
“What is it, La Flor?”
“When you go to the Y, spend two hours at full speed. Maybe you can cut half of those calories off.”
“Maybe so La Flor, maybe so. What are you going to do?”
“I’m texting my friend at the mystery writers blog and seeing if she wants to go out with me tonight. There’re lots of fish in the ocean.”
May the good Lord have mercy on the male alt ego species.
We all have down times. We all slip into depression. That’s where friends count. A friend who will be there with us. A friend who will not judge us. A friend who will listen quietly. And, a friend who will help lift us out of the darkness and into the sunlight.
* La Flor is a fictional character and acts as my alt ego. Her character has evolved over the blog posts. She began with a single letter as her name. Her name gradually grew to two letters, then three before she settled on La Flor. She liked the name because it fit her idea of a beautiful, tough, and edgy feminine PI. It is my interaction with her persona that serves as the source of these blog posts. I have no notion how La Flor will continue to evolve. It is an adventure for me as well as the reader.
No writer’s block today. I feel as if I’m on a rocket named mood swing. I have blog ideas riding my dendrites as if they were at the San Antonio rodeo. If only one of them would hang on for eight I might have something.
“Ray?”
“Z uh? What’s wrong? You sound depressed. Did you catch it from me yesterday? Your name is still Z uh, right?”
“I didn’t have the energy to change it.”
“You want to talk?”
“Are you going to listen or pretend you’re listening?”
“Can I do a little of both? You know how my mind works. Don’t take it personally. You have a good three or four minutes of my full attention. After that, I lose control. An alien force takes hold of my mind and sends it at warp speed to places in the cosmos that no man or woman have ever traveled.”
“Give me a break with the
Z uh’s comment took me aback. I’ve never thought about Z uh having a boyfriend. “What kind of boyfriend?” I asked with a bit of trepidation in my voice.
Z uh gives me a look that tells me not to go there. She said, “Are there any dating sites for alt egos?”
“Dating sites for alt egos? You mean characters like you who’ve taken on a life?”
“Duh! Of course.”
“Let me check. I’ve found one. It’s called Alt Egos Need A Life dot com. Let’s check it out.”
“Thanks for helping me, Ray. Maybe I’ll find that special alt ego.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Z uh. I got to warn you, there are a lot of sick, weird, seriously warped alt ego personalities floating around.”
“Give me your laptop. I don’t trust you filling out my profile.”
“It sounds like you’ve done this before.”
“I previously used one or two or three or four of my aliases.”
“Any luck?”
“All bad. But I haven’t tried this site. I’m feeling better already. I’m taking charge of my life.”
“There’s a phone call for you.”
“Who is it? I’m busy.”
“Your girlfriend from the mystery writers blog wants to know if you want to go with her to an alt ego club tonight.”
“Don’t wait up.”
“Be careful.”
“Okay. You’re a good friend, Ray.”
What is a friend? We all need them. It’s nice to have lots of friends. It’s even better to have at least one or two real friends who’ll drop everything to help when you’re in trouble. The kind of friends who don’t count the cost, time, or want payback. They pitch in because they’re your friend. This is the kind of friend I want to be. As Bruno Mars said in his song, Count on Me. “You can count on me like one, two, three I’ll be there. And, I know I can count on you like four, three, two you’ll be there.”
