Emily Mollitor - Final Conversation

George: Well hello ma'am. Do you mind if I sit and have a chat with you?

Linda: No, of course not. May i ask your name?

George: Sure, my name is George. And yours?

Linda: I'm Linda. How are you doing this morning?

George: Not so good. You see, I've done this awful thing.

Linda: Oh goodness. It couldn't possibly be that bad...?

George: Well you see, I had this friend. His name was Lennie. We were together for a long while, and I was incharge of taking care of him because he was mentally handicapped. We worked on a farm together and became pretty good friends with the boss's son, Curly.

Linda: Oh, I'm not understanding why you are upset.

George: Well you must wait, there is more! The whole time I was with Lennie, he had this fascination with soft things. I had to take away a few mice from him that he had killed because he had been petting them too hard.

Linda: I get it now, you must be upset because you had to take something he liked away from him?

George: No, no, no. That is not it either. One day one of the other workers, Slim, gave Lennie a puppy. He figured that since he was killing mice from petting them too hard, he would give him a puppy since that would be much harder to kill since a puppy is so much bigger then a mouse.

Linda: That was sure nice of him!

George: Yes, I thought so too! He instantly fell in love with the puppy and didn't ever want to leave it. Well one day, the puppy looked as if it was going to bite him. So Lennie taking defense, he told the puppy that he was going to hit him if he did that ever again! Well, Lennie doesn't know his strength and ended up hitting the puppy, which killed it. Curly's wife comes into the barn where Lennie was and saw him holding the dead puppy. She became very sad for the boy and since she knew that he liked to touch soft things, she let him touch her hair. Lennie again didn't know his strength and pulled her hair very hard and threw her onto the ground!

Linda: Oh goodness! That is awful! I can't even imagine what you are feeling.

George: Thank you, but that isn't even all of it. I headed out to find Lennie and once I found him, I shot him in the back of the head. Since I knew that he was going to be killed anyway, I took it upon myself to do it so he did not have to go through the panic of knowing.

Linda: Oh my gosh. I don't even know what to say!

George: I feel so awful. I know that I may have been doing it so he did not have to go through the worry of knowing that he was going to be killed, but I also did it becasue I knew that I couldn't pursye my dreams if I was always needing to look out for him.

Linda: You know, I understand where you are coming from! I had a husband who was so focused on his job and he wanted the best life for our kids possible. He would be gone for days at a time for business trips and would come home with no money. He became what I would call psychotic. He had these dreams where he would fanticize about this woman or would dream about what our kids were like. Even though living with him was quite the struggle for me, I continued to let him live his fantasy world because I loved him. I think that this is very much like your situation. Deep down you loved Lennie and knew that killing him would be the best for him, like I knew that letting Willy live in his fantasy world was the best thing for him.

George: I'm still not convinced that i made the right decision though. I feel like people will look down upon me because of my decision.

Linda: You know, I always felt like my two sons were mad at me for letting him continue to live that lifestyle. But I knew that Willy was depressed with the situation already and I felt that letting him know that he was disappointing me was only going to make his actions worse.

George: That is probably true. I hope that someday he will figure out I was only doing it for his good.

Linda: I'm sure he will, it might not be right away but eventually he will see that you were looking out for him.

George: I sure hope so. Well it was a pleasure talking to you Linda. Thank you for listening to my problems. It was reasuring to see that you have had issues just like mine!

Linda: You will find that there are a lot of people in the world that have to deal with a mentally handicapped, depressed, or other clinical issues. You are never alone, George! Have a nice day!