Hope for Rudy

I could tell a story about a boy and a girl. I could give them names like Rudy and Hope. I could make it a love story. I could set it in any big city. Rudy might own a hot dog cart and Hope could be attending a nearby university. Hope might walk by Rudy’s food cart every day on her way to school, smelling the delicious dogs cook, yet unable to try one what with tuition, and books, and living. Rudy might also have noticed Hope, in which case he would likely keep a hopeful eye out for her daily passes-by. It could be that he has learned at about what time she will show, and on which days. But how to get her attention? How to make her notice a lowly street cart vendor?

With those thoughts in mind he might begin to shout-out, mainly to her, but using the metropolitan throngs for a disguise. He could find the courage to hail the passers-by, grabbing for their attention with comedy and innuendo, but mostly with hopes of catching her notice;

”I see you lookin’, and I’m-still-a-cookin’!” He might sing out. Or,

”Right here is the biggest weenie you’ll find between two buns!” Or even,

”They don’t just smell delicious, they also satisfy your wishes!”

Rudy could begin to think of a new one every day, a new line to impress. He might practice these new lines before she arrives, testing their reactions on the passing strangers, only to find that the pickup lines do, indeed, work. He could begin to have so many customers gathered around his cart that he can no longer see Hope when she passes, for he has failed to keep his eye-out, those eyes finding themselves glued to a pickle jar cash register that is filling so fast he cannot take his eyes off of it.

The money in the jar grows so fast, in fact, that Rudy buys another cart, and another, and he pays people to run them all. He teaches them to sing out to the passers-by just as he used to do, and those people are also successful, and their pickle jars fill equally as fast, and he pays them commensurately, fulfilling their dreams as well as his own, yet still his life is incomplete.

And then one day Rudy is sitting on a park bench, listening to his newest employee attract customers when Hope passes on the sidewalk. He jumps to his feet, giving chase! He catches her, and explains how, because of her, he overcame his life-long shyness. How because of her and the hope she supplied him, his pickle jar overflowed, and how he owed that all to her. And he explained that, despite all of the carts he now had, and all of the money, he was still not happy, as there was no one to share his successes with. And he asked her then if she could find it in her heart to love a lowly street cart vendor?

And Hope might see how he loved her. She might be moved by his story. She might even love him back, but does that matter to the reader?

What matters is that it is a simple love story, simply told. A one in a million of love stories told since the dawn of time, no more alike than the others, and no more different. We do not know Rudy, and we cannot know Hope. We cannot know about their race, their culture, their ideals, or their religions. We cannot care about those things, if we are moved to care at all. And if we are moved, then we can only care that they are human, and that they have a story, and that if that story is told in the right way, then we will root for them both. But in truth, we will not even be rooting for them, but for love itself.

So, Donne was right when he said that, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” We are wired to care about mankind, regardless of situations. Knowing this, can diversity in stories matter a whit? No. Diversity is irrelevant. It is the people in the stories that matter, the humanity they express, and the emotion the writer applies to those people that reaches out from the page to touch our hearts.