The Five People

If you could have dinner with any five people, living or dead, who would they be? The choices you make reveal who you truly are. There are five people, dead mostly, who I would give anything to meet.

My first choice is J.R.R. Tolkien, a man whose bedtime stories have kept the world spellbound for generations. Tolkien created his own way, his own world, and his own life. He was brilliant and eccentric, unique and charming. I imagine that if I had dinner with Mr. Tolkien it would be outdoors on a warm summer's night, much like the night of Bilbo's one hundred and eleventy-first birthday. I would ask him about Legolas, Frodo, and Sam. What happened after the story? What are the grey havens like? Are Aragorn and Arwen happy? Mr. Tolkien would tell all. He'd smoke a pipe and enchant me with his tales. I would tell him about my world too, the books I plan to write. I would ask him what he thought of the manuscripts I had labored over. I think he would like them. We would sit and talk together, he and I, while faeries and all sorts of magic flew by. For in imagination anything can be created or undone. If the world was full of it, even the smallest stars would twinkle more brightly.

My second person would be my Great-Grandpa Kamm. My father has told me many stories of his humor. He used to whittle monkeys out of peach pits, intricately carving them with a large knife. He smoked like a chimney, which killed him in the end. My dad says he would have liked me. We would not have dinner; instead, we would have a picnic just like the annual one our family used to have in Chicago. We would barbecue chicken and eat spiked watermelon. I would ask him to tell me stories about my dad when he was young. The sun would move across the sky as we talk about our family and sip ice cold lemonade. It would be a perfect picturesque afternoon, just me and my great-grandpa talking about life, the trees of blowing in the windy city, a hug before I said goodbye.

Eleanor of Aquitaine would be my third selection. She was the first women to decide that she deserved better than being married to an insufferable boor who had no feelings for her. She threw off the King of France to marry a young Henry the fifth. I think we would probably dine in a palatial banquet hall. We would feast while minstrels played their soft songs of love. I would ask her about her husband and her children. I would listen as she recounted story after story from her life. I would tell her about are world, how women and men are equals. I would tell her about how her invention of courtly love can still be seen every time a man opens a door for a woman. What fun we would have, she and I, sitting while to world turned by. We would be joined together by hundreds of year of fighting just to get our equal footing in a world where masculinity towers over femininity. And the fight goes on…

The fourth person that I would dine with is God. You may call him what you will. I have no idea what he would look like, if in fact he is a he. I suppose we would eat in Paradise where Adam and Eve once walked. It would be a strange conversation because he would know me more than I even knew myself. He would know what I was going to say before I even said it. I would ask him about himself. I would ask him what my purpose was in life. I would leave no stone unturned in my search for answers knowing full well that I would only be scrapping the surface of divine truth. I would ask him to forgive me for the bad things I had done and to transform me so that I may become more like him. Mayhap I will get to have my dinner with God, but I doubt it will happen for many an age.
The final person that I would like to eat dinner with is myself. Not the self that I am now obviously, but my future self. We would go to field of strawberries and eat until we were content. Maybe we would crunch on the occasional peach. If we had dinner in a restaurant it would most certainly be pasta. I would ask myself if I was happy. Am I married? Do I have one or two of those children I vowed would never come into existence? What do I do for a living? What happened to my family? Dinner with my future self would help me go forward into my future with certainty. I might help me avoid mistakes along the way. I could see the path that I am headed down and turn left or right if I wished. Knowledge is power. The knowledge of one's future is the power to change.

These are the five people that I would most like to share a meal with. Now I pass the question on to you.