Pluto (Piece 1)

Encouragement can come from strange things

“Did you hear about Pluto?” She asks me.

“What?” I mutter. I try to not look at the faces of the people I work for. She is getting in the way of this cardinal rule.

“It’s not a planet anymore. Imagine that. You go your whole life being something important, and then some scientist comes along and just takes it all away, just like that.” I see her in my peripherals. She’s young. Probably middle school, but I don’t know. People just look younger to me every day.

“Yeah, imagine that.” I keep scrubbing the blood stain out of the white-washed wall. Maybe if I scrub harder she will go away.

“What do you do? She asks me. “You work in a hospital, so you’re important.”

I laugh. “I don’t know who told you that. I’m a janitor hon.”

She pauses. “Well you’re here everyday right?”

“Right.” I try not to think about why she might be here. It's better not to know.

“And if you don’t  clean the rooms, they can’t use them, right?” she continues.

I stop scrubbing. “I would hope not.”

“So there you go, that sounds pretty important.”

The solution from my washcloth is rolling down the wall. “I don’t know if everybody else sees it that way.” I try to focus back on my stain and not one the beeping of the machines and the rolling of the gurneys as they go by on the hard floors.

She doesn’t talk for a while, and I think maybe she has left. Then she talks again. “So you’re kind of like Pluto.”

“What?”

“You’re still there, even if people don’t notice you.”

And so I smile for the first time in a long time. “Thanks kid. Good luck.” I start scrubbing again.

Reviews

[Crowsef]

Nice parallel - it's nice to see how knowledge develops and changes, nice to see a child react to that, and make an grown up look at his own life a bit. I look forward to seeing how this idea develops over the month! Will there be a recurring theme or is it just musings of the day?

[NyanMeow]

Thanks for the review! I am not planning on a theme, because I think the heart of NanoWrimo is to not get caught up in it. But knowing what's going on in my life, I think it will be interesting to see whether my work reflects that!