Sarp Yanki Kalfa Yankee ENGLISH 15 April 25, 2013 The Lives We Left Behind There are moments in our lives that will someday define us. It is not the gravity of the choices we make but the impression they leave on us that will one day define us as individuals. Had I known how drastically my life would change as a result of the choice I made one day when I was fifteen, my life would surely be very different. When my father first asked if I had any interest in going to France, the question passed through my mind as fleetingly as a spring breeze, but had I known that this decision would one day define me as a man, I might have answered differently. Today I have only God to thank, because for some reason on that day the winds of fate led me on one of the greatest adventures I could ever imagine. This is my story. As I stepped off of the plane in Lyon France there was a kind of electricity in the air, the kind you only feel when you leave your past behind to begin anew. Jacque must have thought me strange just standing there in the cold September air with nothing but a coat and a small brief case. As he strode over to me I was struck by an eerie sense of familiarity as if I’d known him for years, which was only compounded by the casual almost jovial tone he took as he introduced himself to me. Had I known the gravity of what our relationship would mean to me as a man, I might have made an effort to pay more attention to the rambling tales he had of his home and the woman he loved. That night we retired in a small cottage on the outskirts of town before beginning the long trek to Paris. The place reeked of horse urine and stale coffee but was still far less foreboding than the hostels in which many people stayed before making the same trip we were about to. The only thing I could think of on the long trip to Paris was my family of whom I would not see for another year. Of course I did not know that at the time… The following few months in the French boarding school passed without incident. They were the antithesis of an exciting time but having Jacque there made the days go by a little faster. Having grown up in the country, Jacque had very little in the way of formal education and didn’t handle himself well in formal situations. It wasn’t his fault that his laid back upbringing came out so often, but it impeded him from gaining access to the more formal circles within our community. Even today I can vividly remember the smell of burning candle wax that filled the loft in which I mentored him in the art of being a gentleman. Jacque may not have had a formal upbringing, but he was a fast learner and the tenacious attitude in which he attacked the lesson plans I gave him was nothing short of inspiring. Some of my fondest memories today are of Jacque and I practicing how to walk and shake hands like a gentleman in the poor candlelight of the loft which we shared. Had I not had a friend like Jacque, those months I spent in Paris would have passed with an amount of entertainment tantamount to a church service. It seemed then that we would never be separated, two against the world as we saw it. I almost have to laugh at the naïve way in which we saw ourselves then. After all when I think back to Jacque, if I don’t laugh I cry. It is not the big decisions that define us as people. It is the small menial ones we take for granted on a day to day basis. Jacque probably never would have done anything amazing with his life had he lived, but the effect he had on mine will stay with me until the day I die- for even though I might have mentored Jacque on how to be a gentleman, it was he who taught me what it truly meant to be a man. It was cold that night, the kind of cold that not only chills a person to the bone. As we walked down the street, Jacque talked on and on as he usually did about the latest politics or about some new girl he was pursuing. No one could talk quite like Jacque, and absolutely no one could keep up with him when he went on one of his rants, be it about political corruption or the up and coming sports team. I didn’t think much of the man walking toward us. He wasn’t anything special, or at least that was what I’d thought at the time. I didn’t hear him the first time he asked for some money but after he pulled the gun out of his coat I was all ears. Moments like that seem to stretch out to last an eternity but trying to remember what happens during that time is like trying to remember the details of a bad dream. The gun was pointed at me, but Jacque somehow managed to close the distance between us in a flash that took a fraction of a second. That fraction was what saved my life. It was also what ended his. The flash of the barrel and the crack of the shot was deafening but my world was completely focused on my friend as he fell. I don’t know how long I kneeled over him yelling for someone, anyone. No one came. Jacque knew I was lying when I told him it would all be alright. We both did. I lost a piece of myself that night, a piece I may never get back, but something I will take with me for the rest of my life was what Jacque said to me that night. “Make this worth it”, he said, and it was then that I realized I no longer owed it just to myself to make something of my life, but to Jacque as well, for he gave his life so that I could one day achieve the opportunities which he would now never see realized.