State Score - 3

Three

            People can change your life in either a good way or bad way. Sometimes it is up to you to decide how they affect you. Other times, it may not be your decision how they affect you. Most people think about their parents, friends, and loved ones when they think about someone who has changed their life. For me, it was an unfamiliar and unnamed face; one I still remember to this day and I think about how he has made me realize how a small, insignificant event can continue to mean a great deal to you.

            When I was thirteen, my grandmother had the chance to travel to Brazil for a mission trip. My mother, aunt, and grandmother traveled around to different churches and made good relationships with those that shared the same beliefs and tried to reach others who did not. Originally, it was just the three of them that were supposed to travel. Fortunately, they worked hard enough and saved the money for my sister and I to go with them. It was an experience that opened my eyes to things I would not have experienced if I had not gone with them.

            We flew through a few airports until we arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We were in Rio for about a week and I remember bits and pieces of things we did, places we saw. But, to me, the most memorable event took place at a little bistro, unnamed and, certainly now, lost to the changes time brings to places. I was drinking some warm tea after my meal, talking with the interpreter about what she did when she was not translating for tourists. People were walking up and down the sidewalk and I saw a figure walk back and forth, back and forth.

            I glanced and realized it was a young man. He leaned over the waist-high fence and said something in Portuguese I could not understand. I just stared, briefly, past his brown face and into his eyes. Before I could say anything, the interpreter yelled at him. Though I did not know what she said, exactly, I could tell she told him, in one way or another, to leave us alone.

It was a response he had heard a thousand times before. He clicked his tongue on the backside of his front teeth, pushed the fence he was leaning against, lowered his eyebrows to show his resentment, and stormed down the pavement with his hands in his pockets. “He wanted your food,” she said. “You can’t feed or give anything to them. They’ll never leave you alone. Sometimes, they rob you,” she told me. I knew it was more than food he wanted from me.

I later learned of how poor that part of Brazil was, among other things I did not have a clue of at the time. But that young man’s eyes was the first remnant I experienced in a foreign country of what is both cruel and divine in this world. I do not remember, exactly, the curves of his face, the color of his hair, or the clothes he was wearing, but I do remember those dark brown eyes that stared into mine. To me, he will forever be unnamed and always remembered.