A List of Best Intentions

I knew my way around Tanglewood High. I knew the sweet spots – where the bathrooms were always empty and had faucets that stayed running for more than three seconds, where the halls weren’t crowded, and the shortest lunch line.

I also knew the perfect time to make an announcement to the vast majority of the student body.

~~~~~

Cody and I had made a bunch of shirts the night before this happened. They were just some cheapo tees we got from Wal-Mart for a couple bucks, and we wrote on ‘em all with fabric paint.

You see, why not make a day dedicated to making someone’s day? It was the precise reasoning behind number fourteen, and even if it had a bit of a slow start, it ultimately ended up being a great thing.

The plan was that Cody and I would go to school super early and wait for people to go into the courtyard. I knew that was where everybody hung out before classes began and where most of the daily gossip started. This time, Cody and I wanted to be the gossip of the day. Well, I did.

We sat outside of the cafeteria until the time came. When that happened – when students began flooding in – I pulled out two of the shirts we made and handed one to him. We each put one on over the shirts we already wore.

Once we turned around to display the message “FREE HUGS!” across our chests, that was when I pulled the loudspeaker out, too.

Initially, we had turned a few heads, but that wasn’t enough. So I, determined to fulfill my day’s goals, turned on the megaphone and screamed, “HELLO, TANGLEWOOD!”

I swear to God, if the feedback was any louder, we’d have attracted dogs. People cringed.

Cody elbowed me and told me to adjust it, so I did.

“SORRY, FOLKS. ACCIDENT. IT HAPPENS,” I recovered.

The heads were a-turnin’.

“I HAVE A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE,” I went on, making sure that people could read the words across my chest. “AS MOST OF YOU PROBABLY KNOW, Y2K IS COMING AND IS GONNA KILL US ALL…”

“It’s a fuckin’ hoax! Jesus…” someone yelled out in apathy.

“HEY, SHUT UP. YOU NEVER KNOW.”

Grunts rippled throughout the crowd. Cody laughed.

“ANYWAYS, MY BEST FRIEND, CODY THOMAS, AND I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE TODAY HAPPY. AND SO WE’RE MAKING IT ‘FREE HUGS DAY!’”

A couple of peers clapped. Looking back, I think it was sarcasm, but I didn’t catch it at the time.

“WE ALL HAVE BAD DAYS. ONES WHERE WE HATE EVERYTHING AND JUST WANNA DIE, AND STUFF. BUT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE FEELIN’ BLUE, YOU CAN GET A FREE HUG! FOR FREE!”

A few more cheers rose, definitely more than before. Cody even chipped in this time.

From the people I could see, everyone looked pretty happy. Their smiles weren’t like, “Ha ha, look at this scrub,” they were genuine. Maybe in hindsight they were out of amusement. I didn’t know and I definitely didn’t give a damn.

“WE GOT ‘BOUT FIFTY SHIRTS HERE. IF YOU WANT ‘EM, COME GET ‘EM, THEY’RE FREE!”

And all of a sudden, the crowd completely tackled me and Cody. They flooded forward with no mercy and wrestled the shirts out of our grips, yanking them hard. If we made people pay for them, we’d have been broke, dude. Before we could even blink, all of our homemade treasures had gone away and were being slipped on by careless teenagers, displaying a happy message across their bosoms. Our hard work had gone into the shirts, and despite our intentions being that people would wear them for the good vibes, there was bound to be a few folks who didn’t grab ‘em for that reason.

Either they just wanted a free t-shirt, or they were truly interested in the idea. Either way, I wasn’t complaining.

After the mob had went away, the crowds parted and I saw Stephanie walking over to us, smiling at the chaos surrounding her. She pointed toward the commotion and then said, “What’s all this?”

“Free Hug Day!” I proudly declared, hands on my hips.

She came closer and looked over Cody and me, pursing her lips. “That’s…new.”

Cody elbowed me harshly. “It was his brilliant idea.”

“Bruce told me you had a list going on, Kev,” she mentioned. “What’s that all about, anyway?”

I wasn’t totally used to tellin’ people about it yet, but that didn’t stop me from trying to keep it simple. “Well, you know how we’re gonna die when 2000 kicks in?”

Stephanie smirked, her eyebrow raised. “Um.”

“That’s a common reaction,” Cody snorted.

“Anyways, I made a list a little while ago and Cody’s helpin’ me out. We got some stuff we wanna do before all the power goes out and we go back to the stone age,” I explained, trying to be concise and informative at the same time. “This is one of those things.”

She nodded and tugged on her backpack strap. “I figured. That’s pretty cool, actually.”

“I know it is,” I had to boast. Like I said before, it seemed like one of my best ideas ever. “Are you gonna participate today?”

“So subtle, Kevin,” Cody mumbled under his breath, probably thinkin’ I wouldn’t catch it.

Stephanie kinda laughed and said, “You know what? Sure. Start me off, Kev.”

“You wanna hug?” I asked, just for clarification, and held my arms out.

She gave me a little hug that started the day off right and certainly set the tone for the rest of it. And since we didn’t share any classes, I’m not sure if she kept it up, but I like to think she did. The rest of my day had given me a sense of hope that probably led to that thought.

~~~~~

When I said I’d be giving out free hugs to anyone who was lookin’ under the weather, I meant it.

Cody, not so much.

We’d passed by at least ten strangers on the way to history for first period, and I’d given them all big hugs, with their permission of course. Cody just stood in the background and twiddled his thumbs.

I confronted him after a while. “Where’s your spirit, homie? You gotta hug people!”

He blushed and receded back into his turtle shell. “Well…it’s like…I’m not really…a hug-y person, you know?”

I nodded. “I’ve known that for a while. Duh. But you can’t be all shy and stuff! You agreed to do this!”

Cody shoved his hands into his pockets as he leaned towards me and whispered, “FYI, I think this idea’s stupid.”

“Whatever, bro. Just do it,” I smirked. “It’s a nice thing to do.”

“I know,” he said aimlessly.

~~~~

I learned the ropes of hugging. Fast.

First of all, I learned to always ask the person if they’re comfortable with hugging.

Otherwise, there’ll be a big chance that they’ll shove you into the nearest wall and call you a loser. And that won’t make their day or your day. It’ll make it worse overall.

Plus, I learned that guys generally don’t like it when other guys ask them if they want a hug. (It beats me why. I’d appreciate the kindness from any gender.)

Lastly, I learned that attempting to hug everyone you see on the way to class dramatically increases your risk of being late.

So I was walkin’ to lunch. And so I kept seeing all these people wearing shirts that said, “FREE HUGS!” on ‘em. Only, there were way more than 50 people wearing them.

Some had scrawled the words over the shirts they were already wearing, ruining perfectly good clothing.

On my way, I saw some of the most inspiring things I’d ever seen since I started my list. Everyone was hugging someone. Even the weird grunge kids and punks and girls who got made fun of in the hallways were getting love.

I almost rubbed my eyes as I was staring at the courtyard ‘cause I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was the bomb. It gave me that warm fuzzy feeling and made me smile.

Like, for once, things turned out exactly the way I’d planned ‘em to be. Hell, it was going even better than I imagined!

So I stood there for a second. And I just kept smiling like an idiot. And people kept walkin’ past me and staring at my shirt. And I was pretty much like a smiling cardboard cutout, just looking all creepy and such.

All of a sudden, I had the urge to pee. (It happens.)

So I headed back real fast to a bathroom to relieve myself, and with the intention of bein’ real quick, I did just that.

But while I was in there…as soon as I zipped up my pants and washed up and everything…I heard crying.

There were soft sobs coming from the stall behind me. They weren’t real loud or nothing, but they were loud enough for me to hear, anyways. I turned around. Nobody else was in the bathroom, either. So I inched closer to the door.

Knocking softly, I whispered, “What’s up in there?” Wasn’t no way I’d let someone cry on my self-made Free Hugs Day.

The sobbing stopped as if the person had held their breath.

“Y’okay?”

“Shut up. Go away.”

The kid shushed me as if I was violating some kind of special rule of no talking.

“Why’re you cryin’?”

No response.

“Can I come in…?”

“No!” The voice was loud and clear. What shocked my socks off this time was the fact that the voice was high and squeaky, though without the huskiness of a prepubescent boy like I imagined in the first place.

“Hey, wait a sec…a girl?” I said.

“Oh my God…” she replied, grunting the words through gritted teeth.

“Let me in,” I urged. “Can I talk to you, at least? Without the door between us?”

I heard shuffling. “I dunno,” the girl said lowly.

“Please? It’s Free Hug Day, so…”

She grumbled something I couldn’t quite hear and clicked the door open. When it swung back, my theory had been confirmed – she was, indeed, a girl.

I furrowed my brow. “Why are you in the boys’ bathroom?”

She scoffed. “’Cause the girls’ is full of gossiping bitches, okay?”

Ouch. I was dealing with an outcast, I guessed. She had a Sonic Youth t-shirt on her thick frame, and the combat boots she wore over her ripped jeans could probably kill someone if she had a reason to.

I flipped my hands up to initiate a hug.

She rolled her eyes. “Go away. I did not ask for this.”

“Hey, you let me in!”

“Get out!”

“What’s wrong? Tell me!” I had to admit that I was being a little nosy, but I was on a mission that day. “I started the whole Free Hugs thing, I can’t let nobody cry today.”

She looked me over for a second and I could hear the blood in her head start to boil. “So you’re the dick that started this stupid thing?”

“What happened to you?” I asked. It came out a little rude, but I was surprised. I never imagined it blowing up in my face, as dumb as that sounds in retrospect.

“Mean people,” she stated flatly, giving me a death glare. “I got asked out today.”

I raised an eyebrow, not quite getting it. “Well, why is that -”

“It was a prank. And the idiot who did it was wearing the same shirt you are.”

My heart plummeted. How could a cause that sounded so great in my head end up with a bad apple? “B-but…that’s…th-that…”

“Now go away.”

“No! That was just one person!” I bargained. “Don’t hate the cause just ‘cause of him. Please.”

“Why’d you do this?” she hissed.

“Do what?”

“Free Hugs. What’s that all about? There’s literally nothing about it that can help. All it does is make people feel like they have to fake happiness, because God knows nobody wants to hear about the problems of somebody who’s having a truly rough day. Though I suppose that’s no different than every other day...” she prodded, flipping her hair over her shoulder and wiping the tears from her now-angry face.

I paused. Beyond “it was on my list,” what could be another reason why I did it? “Well…I like hugs…”

She laughed and rolled her eyes again. Well, at least she wasn’t crying.

“And…like, I wanted to make today happy and stuff. At least for one person.”

I was then reminded of one failure of my good intentions just by looking in front of me.

“It didn’t really work,” she said so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. “There are too many bad people here.”

“But the good outweighs the bad,” I reasoned. “That goes for the rest of the world, too. There’s always gonna be bad stuff and bad people and everything. You don’t always gotta be happy, I guess, that’s cool too.”

The girl bit her lip.

I spread my arms out. “Do you wanna hug? C’mon.”

She wiped her eyes, and for once, I saw a little smile.

Taking that as a yes, I pulled her into a nice friendly hug that was no different or less enthusiastic from the other ones I’d given, and she even kinda did the same right back at me.

And out of joy, I told her, “You should get revenge on that kid before the world ends.”

She cried even harder. When she let go, she was smiling and asked me, “Wait…so you’re that kid who’s doing that list, too?”

“Yep,” I nodded.

“Damn. Well, you have a lot of determination,” she said. “I kept hearing about some idiot who believes in Y2K, but I didn’t think he’d be nice.”

“Hey, I’m nice!” I defended, feeling personally insulted about a hypothetical situation.

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I just said you were stupid,” she laughed a bit. “You really think the world’s gonna end?”

I shrugged. “You never know. Why not do it all?”

She opened her mouth to speak, then said nothing. “Well, there’s that whole possibility that the world’s not gonna end…”

“Still.”

I let her go after a few more minutes. After stumbling across that nameless girl that day, Free Hugs Day only seemed to go only uphill, and that makes sense – things can only get better after they sink past a certain point, right?

Cody even grew a pair and had the guts to ask strangers for hugs, even if I had to kick his butt to do it. I just continued on like I always had.

Free Hugs Day ended as a huge success, as far as I could tell. There were Free Huggers I’d passed all day who smiled at me and gave me high-fives, calling me “Slater” rather than my first name. It was pretty dope, if you ask me – it’s just inherently cool for people to call you by your last name. It felt like a rite of passage.

I left school that day feeling fresh. Like I’d just got done conquering the world, even if the only thing I conquered was number fourteen on my epic list of pre-2000 goals. People may have always remembered Wednesday, September 8th, 1999 for something other than what I did, but I think Tanglewood remembered it for the First Annual Free Hugs Day.

I haven’t been back at Tanglewood High for about eight years, but from what people tell me on Facenook and stuff nowadays, they have a Free Hugs Day every year ‘cause of me. When I did it initially, I never dreamed of that – I dreamed of just a simple day of happiness. As hippy as that sounds, I wanted to spread love. Apparently, people liked that, teachers and staff included.

The bus ride home that day was bittersweet. At the time, I was a little sad about having to leave the best day ever, then I realized it wasn’t so bad.

So far, things had been going great. Everything on my list was going tight. So things could only get better, I imagined.