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Today, I went to church. That’s easy to say and doesn’t say very much. First and foremost I am catholic, things in my life had made me believe. Therefore, like any other routine I go to church. Every weekend without a fight. Yet today there was something different. Not during mass but rather after it. We met up with someone. My aunt has a friend called Karen who has to kids. One who is 3 years old and one who is 3 months old. Both as I soon saw were filled with happiness. Their happiness appeared to light the world around them. There was no cloud in the sky and somehow the light, the hope seemed to be coming from them. I had seen the three year old before a couple times and it was my first time seeing three month old Elizabeth. She had curly black her sprouting from her scalp softer than even the best silks. Her eyes shone large and brightly and seemed to evoke happiness even from her tired eyes and strange looks that you give to strangers suddenly cooing you. Her hands were tiny miracles. I lifted my hands from my side unto her cheek which I brushed softly then down to her tiny hands. Her hands soft and innocent left a strange feeling on my hands that have changed with time. The folds of her knuckles, the nails everything just the same as mine, and yet somehow different innocent. As she took my hand and smiled the word flew from her into my brain. Innocence. Eight letters that usually described sweetly and as a benevolently. The other one, Elijah, ran from time to time at first hiding behind his dad’s legs shooting shy glances and secret smiles at me. As though he was sharing a secret. A memory. Something. And then he ran, and came back to his dad’s legs once more and so the cycle continued. Run, come back, run, come back.
Okay, now fast forward. About 30 min. ago. Went to the fridge. No milk. Okay well then, lets go buy milk! Get in car. Drive to a gas station. And that’s when things change. There’s of course the 7 eleven near our school. But there’s another one about the same distance of my house but in the opposite direction. Why go there? Well, its cheaper, I guess. But cheap things… well they’re cheap for a reason right. So we get there. A dark gas station that somehow makes you a bit depressed just by the look of it. Outside of it a couple of gangsters. And by gangsters I don’t mean those people in my school that wear low jeans and listen to rap. No, real gangsters. With guns and tattoos and a fearful energy you receive. Get off the car, walk up to the store. A sign over the front door states the current prices for cigarettes. Marbolo, Camel. Like any store in a gas station. And yet different. The prices could be changed as though they were the signs that post up the price of the gas itself. Odd I thought and a bit eerie scene. We went in. The store clean and yet somehow dirty and oddly heavy. Somehow it seemed to kick you out just as soon as you came in. Ok, then, we’re here for milk right? Go and get milk, is there any eggs? Ok, buy some too. We get to the cashier. And I notice a TV suspended over our heads. Look closely, security tape. Look around, 5 security cameras. Why that many? Person in front of us, gone. Ok, now pay. The cashier was a Mexican who was nice you could say. Well, that’s not too bad. Look around cashier. So many cigarettes. And I don’t mean a regular pack. Cuban cigarettes, with cognac and chocolate flavors. They have flavors? I think. Cigarette paper? What the hell is that for? Pay. Walk out the door. WHAT’S THAT SMELL? Is it flowers. No. It’s like nothing I have ever smelt before and yet I have. In some remote memory probably in the dark side of town. Hurry, get in the car. Dad, what was that smell? Is that guy rolling a joint? And inevitably the answer comes, yes. Drug addicts, and marihuana, and guns, and fancy cars. And all is tied together. So this is what they do for a living. Sell drugs? Or maybe they’re pimps? Like real pimps who take care of prostitutes and give them drugs in exchange for the money they earn at their “work”.
One situation followed by the next. On the same day. Innocence and… that! And then it comes to me. Is innocence really a good thing? I mean, if I hadn’t known what this people were doing. If I couldn’t understand. If I was more innocent I guess, I could have been in trouble, no? Isn’t innocence a kind of vulnerability? But, maybe all knowledge isn’t that good either. I mean if I hadn’t known what they were doing and actually understood, well, I wouldn’t have been quite as affected by it. Right? And if people didn’t know these things existed, that there were these kinds of outlets to your life, such as drugs for example, well maybe they wouldn’t be doing it. Even more deeply, if they were innocent they probably wouldn’t notice the problems the world had and wouldn’t need an outlet in the first place. I mean it’s really oddly perplexing. Haven’t you noticed how it’s the intellectuals, the rebel rock bands who have given thought that get into these things? But its not only them. Its also the innocents. The ones who don’t know what’s really wrong and are therefore affected by little things in their life such as what someone said are some simple thing. They also do this. Because they’re convinced easier. So, how much do you need to know. To be okay. Or is it more of what you need to know. The scruples and principles as well as the bad things in the world? A clearness between adulthood and maturity? I’m not exactly sure. Is growing up actually a good thing? Our childhood memories are incomparable to anything else. And yet when you talk to someone older than you, you realize all was not well. All was not happiness. You just didn’t understand. So then I wonder whether it is better to understand than to not understand. Are we doing ourselves more damage by sadness and depression by understanding instead of living life happily with innocence? Or maybe knowledge prevents our lives from becoming prisons to vices? Maybe that’s one of the things we will never understand until the day we die. Either way I think we should stay hopeful. Maybe there's still people out there who can have knowledge without it corrupting them.