Recently one of my favorite late-night procrastination methods has been online backgammon. Until a week and a half ago, I hadn't played since I was 10 years old and my grandmother was still alive. But something drew me to the Lycos gaming page, and there I was last Sunday at 12 a.m., playing and chatting with a 36-year-old single mom just getting off the night shift.
We ended up playing and talking for a couple of hours, after which I felt surprisingly touched.
After slowly introducing ourselves and making small jokes about the game, we got around to talking about her job, supervising an assembly line at a razor-wire factory. It's tedious yet dangerous work. "Stay in school," she writes, adding a "lol" (for the IM-challenged, that means laugh-out-loud).
As we gradually start revealing who we are and what we do, I mention that one of my favorite stress releases is to teach kids tennis, which in turn leads the discussion to her eight-year-old daughter.
"She never shuts up," she writes.
"I can relate, believe me," I write back. "But one of the joys of being young is not having to be subtle. Plus, I bet she's really bright." She laughs. "She scares away the men, though." I laugh, too.
We end up talking about her daughter for quite some time. After I noted that I was up late writing a paper comparing two works by Machiavelli, she responded that she couldn't imagine writing such a paper, but that one day her daughter will be ready to challenge me to an intellectual battle.
I smile. I'm also moved. It hits me then that this woman-working at all hours of the night in some small town somewhere across the United States-is laboring through a difficult life all for her little girl, the love of her life.
We talk a little bit about deeper subjects like pain and hardship, and about how dearly she wants to protect her little girl from the world.
I've got a hunch that the girl's father was either abusive or adulterous--probably both--so I drop a note about my first love and her experiences.
"What a sobering experience it is learning that the world is cruel and sad," I write. "I wish your daughter learns that lesson later rather than sooner."
I realize during our discussion that the woman playing with me from thousands of miles away is sacrificing everything she has all for the hope--just the hope--that one day her daughter might have the chance to attend a place like Duke.
She would give her right arm--something which, given the dangerous nature of industrial factories like hers, just might end up happening to her--for her daughter to be able to lead a life like mine.
As the jaded intellectual that I am, I often scoff at that all-too-abused phrase, "The American Dream." And yet, as I'm sitting at my computer I realize that this single mother is working her ass off at some crummy job because of that dream. She works hard so that her child can have access to worlds her mother has never seen.
It's heart-warming stuff, the kind of story politicians parade on TV as they reach under the table to grease their palms with special interest money. But just because her story gets taken advantage of by others seeking personal gain doesn't make her life any less real.
So many of us within the Duke community live our lives oblivious to these stories. We drive around in our SUVs and BMWs and go out for parties in expensive clothes, and we ignore much of the real world.
I know I'm a prime offender. After all, I'm delaying a term paper and playing some stupid online game because I'm too damn lazy just to get it done.
You know, I know I get accused all the time of being some morally sanctimonious a------, as a guy who really gets off on climbing into a bully pulpit and telling everyone they walk around with a blind eye to the world. The funny thing is, I don't see myself as very moralistic. I mean, what kind of atheist preaches morality?
But I just can't shake the feeling that for too much of my life I've been lucky beyond someone else's wildest dreams, and that I'm screwing around with an opportunity for which other people work their whole lives.
With final exams coming up, I battle just like everyone else to finish the term strongly. I know that I can get decent grades by working only so hard, but each term it takes an extra effort to really do well. Some semesters I've given that effort, but some semesters I haven't.
As I hunker down in my room this weekend I'm really hoping I think of my new friend and her small, two-person family. I know that as she's preparing for their little Christmas in their little house somewhere far away, she's probably praying to God that her daughter will one day in the future have the opportunity I have right now.
I hope they have an awesome Christmas.
Nick Christie is a Trinity senior and an associate sports editor for The Chronicle.
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