Friday, April 04, 2008

Pancake Theory Part II

I feel a need to explain the “Pancake Theory” post a little bit.

Last year, there was a young man here at the school. In the year that he was here he spent a lot of time with me and my friend R. I spent a lot of time listening to him in the first term, because he was crushing hard-core for R. and needed someone to talk to. After he talked to R. about how he felt (they never did go out) they spent more time together, and the three of us did dinner music together for a few months.

R. and I both counted him as a friend. Then he went home, just for the summer. We both heard from him once or twice. His only email to me did sound a bit strange – too chipper, too insistent that there were no problems between him and his parents which I thought was odd since I hadn’t thought there were problems and thus hadn’t said anything about it in my email to him. There was some scattered muttering about whether we would ever see him again – and then his father and uncle came into Rosebud and cleared out his room, leaving a typed, formal letter with the school that he wouldn’t be coming back to school in the fall.

This came out of the blue to some people and some nodded and said they’d seen it coming.

Since then, however, we haven’t heard a peep from this young man. Not a whisper, not a sign that he’s alive. He’s been deleted from Facebook, he vanished from MSN Messenger, and as far as anyone knew, emails were vanishing into cyber-space. If people phoned, his father would very curtly tell them that he wasn’t there and he wouldn’t offer to take a message. It fuelled the speculation, which went on for months – a long time considering he was only here a year. That should give you an idea of how much people liked this fellow and how odd it seemed that he just suddenly cut us all out of his life. It was very dramatic.

Some people in town (and I might add, these people are extremely sane people, who surprised me greatly with this train of thought) came up with a theory – they decided that this young man was being kept captive in his bedroom by his parents and being fed pancakes under the door.
I didn’t completely buy into the theory, but I did think about tracking him down in person, or phoning the police in his hometown and reporting a missing person, but with some thought I dismissed it as too extreme.

Or was it? [The suspenseful music begins here.]

I continued to email this young man, without expecting a response, just because I cared about him and wanted him to know what was going on in my life. In my last email to him I felt a compulsion to give him my blog address, so I did.

And he left a comment on this very blog! He refers to himself as a dinner music partner, and since only two of my dinner music partners know of my blog (him and R.) and R. didn’t leave that post (I asked her) it must have been him. I was very excited to hear from him, but even so didn’t want to pressure him into correspondence or anything.

(In case that comment gets deleted, I’ve retyped it here:

Your a very interesting person R. I never knew there was so much going on inside of that head of yours. May the Holy Spirit bless you with his riches and may he really make himself known to you. He's still living you know. All of the things written of in Acts still happen today. I love you with the love of the Lord. He loves you with such a love, oh wow it's powerful.
A certain Dinner Music Partner
Beloved Marriage

I have no idea what the "Beloved Marriage" comment means, unless he's being forced into an arranged marriage of some sort and this is his last cry for help.)

Anyway, I waited a little while and then sent him another email.

This was instantly bounced back to me, because his email address is suddenly permanently not available. So I’ve either been super-blocked or he’s deleted his email address.

Or his parents have.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. Why, after almost a year of emailing him, would he suddenly decide to block me now? And why block me after finally contacting me? And why was his message to me so bizarre?

I’m back to the pancake theory, people. I’m back to the pancake theory.


(Although, as S. had great fun pointing out last night, he could also be fed cheese slices, pizza, pitas, peanut butter on a playing card, ice cream mashed under the door – he went on for quite a while, until I explained that “Pancake Theory” has a much better ring than “Pancake/Pita/Pizza/Cheese Slices/Peanut Butter on a Playing Card/Mushy Ice cream Theory”. And it does.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

or a waffle... nachos..fish fillets.. ok ok, I'm sure you've heard these. That's a very mysterious friend you have. Or rather his family. Either way, I hope he's ok and if need be, taken care of.

Daphne

Whispering Heart said...

i never knew that you had such mysterious peeps around.....

i hope he is ok and that he is at least getting blueberry pancakes...mmmmmmm....blueberry's.....

oldest brother