Watching them watching you.
 

Caught in a stare, they quickly attempt to look past you, or they dart their pitying eyes pretending the stare never happened. One would think that after thirty years of friendship they would be able to confront your illness with a bit of dignity and truth, and set aside the patronizing, half-hearted, overused, "Well-you-look-good," approach, when you know as well as they that you don't look good at all. You saw what you looked like before you left the house, and you left anyway. Tonight you decide to confront the issue head on. You take a step toward them...okay, a half step, and on your face you have plastered...okay, draped the biggest, crooked, little smile you could muster. Your eyes look up. The stare is back, and worse, they know you're coming. Just 20 more feet. That's only 120 festinating steps. Come on feet. Don't fail me now.

michael b.

(please add your paragaph...just 1...to this little story. Express yourself.)

Something snaps inside...
 

...and you don't care in the same way you did a minute ago. So you start hopping toward then on one foot (or whatever trick breaks freezing for you). As you collapse into a chair and before any words can escape their open mouths, you laugh a little bitterly and say, "See what a crazy disease I'm dealing with? Explain to me why I couldn't walk but I could do that! It's bizarre!"

and,
 

these days, when a hug is the expected greeting to even the newest acquaintances, you haul yourself out of the chair, and go gamely forward in hug position. A second later you regret your attempt at politeness, for the hug has put you off balance, and to keep from falling you are forced to kling, in a tight embrace, to the surprised and bewildered hugger, who gets the wrong idea and thinks you are being embarrassingly affectionate........

cont.
 

Then, as he peels you off of him,and holds you away at arm's length as you steady yourself, he asks with an embarressing uneasy laugh what you have been doing lately. So, you tell him you've been working on various projects and then he interrupts you and with some lame excuse says he has to go...

...he walks away, wondering if there is any way he can catch the disease.

paula

You search the crowded room
 

http://www.state.gov/cms_images/0411...nnight_380.jpg


for a friendly face...no,a friendly space would be better. The chair that you left is now taken. There is another, but it seems to be 2 miles away. You have to at least try. You begin your slow, seemingly methodical trek, seeking only a comfort zone from which you can again function. Will the chair still be available by the time you arrive? "Act natural," you think. Trying to remember what that is, you continue.

Only to be buttonholed
 

by the completely oblvious chatterbox you have successfully managed to avoid until this moment. He is full of information you don't want to hear, and as you try to unglue your feet from the floor to reach the chair, he

reaches out his hand to steady you and the impact of his hand sends back into the chair. while he stands and wonders if it were you or he that had caused this. You glare at him and he once more turns away in a mood of anger, not at you but at himself for interferring in what could have been an injury for you. I should not have done that and I won't

"Thank you", I called out so he wouldn't be upset and proceeded to tell him I was fine, that I had plopped into many a chair, that plopping was a way of life for me, that one time I plopped....as he excused himself. I smiled to myself, chatterboxes don't do well with other chatterboxes. But then, I had to go to the bathroom...

Now, where is the bathroom?
 

There are no restroom signs in the banquet hall, but through the large opening, just outside the massive room, in the foyer, to the left hangs the blue restroom sign. To get to it one would have to maneuver through a wall of people. Then it hits me, "What if I can't make it in time?"