Week Three - Response to Shaunna's "Part 3 of Pros"

Part 3
A Memory Named Joe
(Spolethome)
The track is wrong, it was 2-B not 2-A. The five of us beat our blistered bubble feet as we burn our legs to the train that was readying to leave. So desperate we wanted the hour and a half to pass so we could kiss the humid air of Spoleto. Leaping in the doors, as eager as the pigeon’s bobbing bread with their beaks, we scattered amongst the coach for a vacant seat. Mine lingered in the isle next to a woman with burnt curls, who hovered over her cell phone, chaotic in texts. The black man across from her stared out the nine PM window, at a reflection of himself. And finally the last of our four was a Roman who shocked the memories of elementary school play grounds and a classmate who, if not for this man’s lazy almond eyes and Spanish features, would have remained lost in the haze of my twenty-one year old timeline. Yet, I see this boy, let’s call him Joe, so clear in my dazed gaze out across the trains’ car, as I occasionally slipping eye contact with this stranger.  I see Joes’ slothful eyes, wet with tears from the toddler bullies who stole his chocolate Debbie cake. They tried to take mine but I was daring enough to take my plastic fork and award him Spiderman band aids from the teacher’s desk. Joe never did anything but cry and squeal. I remember those screams and snot drenched nostrils that bubbled with every exhale. No one in the classroom wanted to touch him in that state of chubby cheeks creasing his drowning eyes and mouth webbing with nose slush. The only thing we did was walk away till he realized no one cared about his stolen Debbie, or knocked over building blocks, and that no one was going help him out of the mud from the morning rain where the little shit of a seven year old shoved him. Joe, like me, was an outcast among outcasts, which meant we never received the new toys, we only ate the leftover oatmeal cookies, our naps consisted of the blanket with moth holes and heads resting on frigid metal air vents, and we never got to be on the good team for kick ball. I will never know what happened to Joe, or was it Jose, maybe Eduardo. Whatever was written on his third grade name tag I will never recall, however, Joe now has made an impact on me, for this hour of a sleep tempting train ride, he branded four sheets of my journal and ran my pen dry. 

If I am understanding this concept correctly, I love it. We see huge crowds of people here--why do we notice one or two in particular? Why do they stick with us? Connecting/remembering/recalling someone the speaker knew previously is a very smart move.

It could, of course, move a bit quicker. I would suggest you jump right into the description of the person you call Joe and cut out the scenery beforehand, including the other people. (Keep  lazy almond eyes and Spanish features for Joe, which I adore. I might go into the meaning of Spanish features a little bit more.). Then, dig deeper. What is it about this man that recalls a bullied childhood school friend? Maybe it’s the entire environment: Joe cries and squeals, a fact you remember as the train screeches on the tracks? What is it about the person sitting across the narrator that recalls her own bullying, and how does it affect her in this moment? How does it reach across the barrier—what kind of barrier is it? What cultural or other walls are palpable between the speaker and the subject on the train?—to touch “Joe,” both the real and the doppelgänger?