Jay V

About me:

We're standing by the window on the 36th floor of the cathedral and I don't want to look down so I look straight ahead. I can see the whole Pittsburgh Metropolitan area from up here. I could very well be looking at all of Alleghany County. Karen's pointing out downtown Pittsburgh, Oakland, Carnegie Museum, and when I ask what that spot over there is, she says, "That's where the real people live."

Cuz we're not real, I say.

"Right. Us college kids don't count."

When we get off the elevator, I take one step off and feel like I have no sense of balance. Every step forward I could fall, and it takes me a minute to make the ten-foot trek from the elevator to the tower's edge.

We look down, just because after all the talk of not looking down, I have to see what the hype's all about. Everything looks so small from up here. Everything's a little toy. Toy cars, toy trees, toy buildings. Toy people.

"I always wonder what it would be like to watch two cars collide from up here," she says, and I just now notice she's wearing a green shirt. "Up here, it's like we're so detached from everything."

Toy accidents.

"This high up, would it look real?"

I don't know, I say. Let's throw a Cabbage Patch Kid out the window and see what happens.

She's still staring down at the street. "I wondered about this when we were up on the Sears Tower. Everything does look like a toy down below."

This image flashes through my mind. A photo of God, staring down on us. He's a lot more than thirty-six stories from the ground level, that's for sure. How detached would He feel from the world below? This world he created in just under a week. Little toy planet.

We live our little toy lives and drive our little toy cars and work at our little toy jobs and die our little toy deaths, and if God isn't at ground zero for all of this, does He really care? Or is it the same as us watching a toy accident from this high up?

I say, Okay, let's get going. I feel like I'm going to fall out of the window from his high up.

She says, "The window's closed. You're not gonna fall out of it." I picture my little toy body flailing about as it hits the little toy pavement.

We get down to the ground floor and I want to kiss it. We walk through the hall and everyone's studying. I make a remark like, Oh, to be in college again, and she reminds me I slept through a lot of it anyway.

We get out of the cathedral and while walking down the steps, she says, "Wouldn't it be ironic if you fell off of here?"

That's when I told her I fell off a car three weeks ago.

(originally published 10 nov 04)

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