What It All Means
September 26, 1998
I don’t know how many times
I have to hear the same story
over and over again.
How many people are going to tell me
the same news, each time a little
differently, with a little more
information. I wonder how many
times I will get to hear the
same news, each time told to me
just a little differently. I wonder how long
it will take before I get a real
picture of what happened
to see what it all means to me.
I still didn’t remember being there,
I think someone put something
into the diet soda I was
drinking from. I know I never took
that drink out of my eyesight,
but that drink had to be tainted
before I ever took my first sip
of it. Well, I know I was getting
lunch while I was at work, and that’s
the last I remember of my work day.
I was at the Gorton’s Cafe, where
you usually had lunch when I forgot
to bring my own food. The next thing I
remember was that I was in a hallway of
the building, I only discovered it was the
basement after I had escaped.
They had a witness there and they
were asking him questions on who he
thought was attractive, and if he lived
alone. I didn’t know why I was there or if
they were going to ask me questions
like that too. Then I saw one of the men
asking question and I saw that he had a gun.
So I figured I had to have been knocked out
and I knew I had to keep myself together
and so I thought for a brief moment
and checked in my head head whether
any parts of my body were in pain. They
weren’t. I thought that had to be a good
sign. So I pressed my forehead, and I
tried to squint my eyes just a little,
so that it looked like I was in pain.
I thought that may be a natural way
to act like I was in pain and still
concentrate on what the other guy was
saying. I might be next, I thought.
There were a couple of guys that were dressed the
same way, wearing grey slacks and when i
started to look I could see that they all
had guns too. But just before I noticed that there
had to be like ten of them in this
room the water sprinklers came on only
like five seconds after the fire alarms
first started going off. Everyone in the
room with me went into a sort of panic, and
then the guy next to me, who was in
regular business clothes, grabbed my hand
and said, let’s go around the side door
on the right. I started to look around and
I could see that everyone who was running
this show, who had guns, was also in
a state of panic of sorts, and so I followed
this stranger out the door. No one even
noticed us leaving the room in the basement.
He must have been conscious when he first
went into the room. I didn’t know my way
around the basement. I followed him until
we got to the lobby level and this guy
wanted to keep going out the front doors
and I stopped and told the people at the
front desk that there were men with guns
in the basement. It was right by the
elevators, that’s what I told them.
Okay, so I wasn’t a hero in that scene.
I never get caught in scenes where I have to
do something that I normally wouldn’t
do. If it wasn’t for this guy, who was
right next to me in the basement,
I probably would never have moved
from my seat. They guys with the guns
got caught that day, they tried to take a hostage
or two before they gave up. and they
didn’t get any of the money they wanted.
I guess there was a happy ending, after
all. No one got hurt. What does it mean to -
to anyone - that sees this story on the news?
Probably not much, because they didn’t
live through it. No. It was just I who lived it.
Copyright Janet Kuypers.
All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.
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