"Man, of course I can't get up like I used to. Wish I could. Ever since I was shot..."
It was my third week in the United States, and I was playing basketball on the Dell in the very late afternoon, trying to impress a bunch of fellow young men by performing a two-handed dunk with a ball I had bought for $16.76 from Wal-Mart.
The light coming onto the court was soft, absolutely perfect for running about and trying to catch passes hurled through the air at great speeds. Someone from the sidelines had laughed and pointed at my shoes (I was wearing black slipper-type things that I like quite a lot) but I didn't mind; I enjoy the slapping noise they make when I run.
Just outside the three-point line, a stocky guy lifted up his shirt to show the three puckered scars on the right side of his body. Like a gangster from an old-style Mafia movie, he was smiling when he retold the story about a long ago night when someone had tried to kill him by repeatedly shooting him in the chest with a handgun. My first thought was fairly obvious: "Wow, someone tried to kill you." I looked Shot Guy up and down; he was flipping the ball back and forth between his legs, his head following the smooth motion of his hands. At that point, my second thought was, "Man, you're really lucky to have survived." With the soft thunk of his jump-shot hitting the backboard, Shot Guy looked very much alive, definitely more so than I did with my dull hangover and the purple bags under my eyes. I know it's selfish, but my third thought was, "Shot? I have never even touched a gun. ... Wait until I tell my friends back home!"
I have been told that most of the fun of moving to a new country is the friends you make. Maybe it's just my nature, but I do not agree. Certainly, I think that the majority of people say this because they are genuinely good-natured and enthusiastic, seemingly always ready to try and soak in a fresh culture. Others, I believe, may say this because they carry the notion that travel will result in some passive osmosis that ultimately "changes" them forever. Though I admire these people and their honorable and generally pleasant intentions, I am clearly not amongst them.
What I really like about traveling (aside from the excuse to buy things I don't really need, like new styles of underwear and assortments of scented soaps at very reasonable prices) is that all my well-worn stories that have fizzled out with friends back home are now more than ready for revival. Also, I get to collect new stories. I know it could be considered boorish, but the hunt, let me tell you, is always on. Therefore I start anew, looking for impressionable American targets.
Be careful if I meet you at a party, a story perched on the edge of my lips like a dim, featherless bird. The best way out, you ask? Ignore my probing for conversation. Claim to have already heard about the time my Uncle Michael threw a tomahawk at my mother. Even though I think it is a rather good family drama worth extended reruns (a linear plotline, some truly strange but essentially likeable characters and a timely, if rather violent, climax all wrapped in one neat package), my mother has threatened me in the sort of way that only mothers can if I mention it in public again. Regardless, I have already started accumulating stories about America that will inevitably bore my friends to a slow, grizzly end -- I am told it is similar to an aural "Chinese" water torture -- on my return to New Zealand.
Of course, the clear number-one pick of all these stories is Shot Guy. Needless to say, I like this story best because, well, guns frighten me immensely in principle and due to the wider fact that guns quite often, well, kill people. It's the whole fear of mortality thing, to be honest.
But Shot Guy survived, and by God I am going to use him for my story. Try and top the Shot Guy story, I will ask my friends at the airport arrival lounge in a year's time. They will try, I am sure. Their attempts will consist of a feeble rehashing of their pathetic New Year's celebrations that I missed out on. I will counter this by re-telling the Shot Guy story, albeit with embellishments. That is artistic license, after all. In no time, Shot Guy will have 12 massive scars, one caused by a bullet careening through his jaw creating a jagged scar on his cheek, leaving him looking exactly like a bad guy from a bad film or a rap star, grinning at his own good misfortune.
Chris Garland is an exchange student from New Zealand. His column runs biweekly on Thursdays, and he may be reached at cg8cx@virginia.edu.
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