Do Something Different

When I got home on Friday, December 14, I did my normal post-work social media check.  Facebook was totally buzzing about the Sand y Hook shooting.  Most of the comments were what you would expect:  “What a horrible thing to have happened!”  “I can’t imagine what these parents are going through!  I can’t wait to hold my kids!”  “This is why guns are awful!”  “This is why we need more guns!”  Pretty much what one would expect.

Then, in the middle of all of this discussion, I noticed a post that had nothing to do with Sandy Hook.  A friend of mine from high school (who I still haven’t managed to see a year after moving down to Austin) posted the following:  “Trying to spread Christmas Cheer: While in Starbucks, I added a $25 gift card to my order and told the baristas to swipe it for anyone that seemed like they were having a bad day to put a smile on their face. Merry Christmas!”

My friend didn’t plan this juxtaposition, but the contrast of all of this discussion about violence and the general outpourings of rage and disbelief with this simple, kind, and selfless act really stuck with me.  I really couldn’t put a finger on why, though.  Sure it was a nice thing to do and we could all use a little faith in humanity after hearing about someone gunning down children.  But that wasn’t it.  There was something else totally beautiful about this simple act that I couldn’t figure out.

A week later, almost no one was still talking about Sandy Hook.  The news cycle had come and gone, and our national attention span had gone back to the upcoming holiday.  I was as guilty as anyone.  We get so wrapped up in our daily lives that we can’t even continue talking about serious issues like gun control and the status of mental health in this country for a full seven days.

Then, a different friend—one I had gone to college with and hadn’t seen since—posted something.  She had bought small gift cards and left them in various places for people to find.  Each one was only a $5 Starbucks gift card (I’m not sure why Starbucks is such a popular means of expressing random kindness, but that’s neither here nor there).   However, I’m sure that the person who found the card while pumping his or her gasoline or who came out of the grocery store and read the accompanying note that just said, “You’re awesome!” was touched by this really small act.

I still had that inkling of a connection between these friends’ acts and what had happened at Sandy Hook, but I was still unable to figure out what it was that was affecting me so deeply.  What did happen, though, was that my friends inspired me.  I had read my second friend’s post just before heading to the grocery store.  While I was there, I decided to skimp a little on my own usual grocery shopping and pick up a gift card for the amount that I had saved.

After I finished loading my groceries in my car, I tried to decide which car to put it on.  It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but certainly it would mean more to some than to others, right?  As I was debating where to leave the card, a woman walked past me with two kids.  One kid was about 4-5 and the other was a toddler.  She had that bedraggled that parents get when they just can’t take anymore from their kids…or from other people…or from the world in general.  So I walked up to her handed her the card and said, “I want you to have this.”  Then I just got in my car and drove away.

I don’t know what kind of day that lady had after that, but I’d like to think that at least for a second after she looked at the card, she was touched by something nice that a stranger had done.  I felt amazing driving home. I had never really done something like this, and I was surprised at how good it felt.  As most people will attest, I’m generally a cynical person, but I’m still usually kind to most people.  This was a completely new experience, though.

During the next week, this stuck with me.  As I went about my daily life, I found little things that cost me negligible money, time, or energy but that were just nice things to do for other people.  About once per day, I was able to do something that brought a smile to someone else’s face.  I haven’t told anyone else about these little things, because it’s hard to tell people that you did something nice for someone else without sounding like you’re trying to impress them with what a great guy you are.

At some point during the last week, I realized what it was that had been sitting in the back of my mind this whole time:  This is how we change the world around us.  It’s not through grand sweeping changes, but through small, seemingly unimportant things that we shape our world.  The world is an awful, cynical, horrible place sometimes, but all it takes is that one person doing something nice for you that you didn’t expect, and the world is brighter—even if only for a few seconds.

I also realized that this is the example that we set for the next generation.  On countless movies and TV specials, children are told that the “true meaning of Christmas” is to spread joy and happiness to those around them.  Miserly old Scrooge finds redemption, etc. etc. etc.  However, during the middle of these movies and shows, they are bombarded with advertising for more new stuff that they just absolutely must have.  They see people act like complete savages during holiday sales.  They’re told these noble ideas about Christmas and how it is about family and love and taking care of others less fortunate, and then they see the most horrible, materialistic side of our society.  And these two conflicting ideas are flashed back and forth and back and forth in front of them for over a month straight.

What if they instead saw a stranger do something nice for one of their parents just because that stranger felt like doing something nice?  Better yet, what if they saw their parent do something nice for a stranger? 

So over the course of the next month or so, I’m challenging myself just once a week to take the time to seize an opportunity to do something nice for a complete stranger.  The only reason for posting this is in hopes that maybe a few other people will do the same.  So go out and try it!

¡Viva la Revolución Robótica!

A few months ago, I had a conversation about cell phones with an acquaintance named Bobby.  His wife and I had both recently bought new phones.  While I had chosen an Android phone, she had gone with the iPhone.  Like many people who have yet to sacrifice their souls at the smart phone altar, he told me how all he had ever wanted from a cell phone was something that can just call other people.  Then he saw his wife’s phone and discovered all the magical wonder within.

After playing with her phone for a while, Bobby went to an AT&T store to buy one of his own.  He told the young salesman how he was thinking about replacing his phone and was curious about what options there might be.

“Did you have a particular brand in mind?” the salesman asked.

“No,” Bobby said, “but I want to buy a new phone.  My wife has an iPhone.  Do you have anything like that?”  The salesman said that they did, in fact, have iPhones and asked Bobby if he would like one.  Playing a bit obtuse, Bobby pointed to the various phones on display in the store and asked, “Well, what’s so great about the iPhone?  Why would I want it over one of these other phones?”

The salesman then explained that the iPhone was considered a smart phone, and many of the other phones on display were also smart phones, although they were from different manufacturers.  “It’s really a personal preference,” he said.  “Some people like the iPhone; some people like Android phones; others like the Blackberry or a Windows Phone.  If you’d like, I can show you one of each, and you can decide which one you might want.”

While this seemed like a reasonable response to me, it infuriated Bobby.  “Now, wait.  I just told you that I’m in here and I want to buy a phone.  I asked you why I would want to buy an iPhone, and you started trying to tell me about all these other phones.”

“Do you want an iPhone?”

“No, I want you to tell me why I should want one.”

The salesman then began to tell him everything one could wish to know about the iPhone.  He told him about all of the features of the iPhone, explained how many different apps there were, and gave him examples of some of the popular apps.  He told him about iTunes, the App Store, and the GPS/navigation features.  The front-facing camera.  480p video recording.  If there was something to be known about the iPhone, the salesman threw it into his spiel.

When the salesman had finished, Bobby pondered a few minutes and asked if any of these other phones could do that.  The salesman told him that there are a lot of overlaps between the various smart phones, and that some had certain features that others lacked and vice versa.  And if Bobby would just care to come over here and take a look at these other phones…

“Stop,” Bobby said. “I don’t want to look at those other phones.  I just wanted you to sell me this goddamn phone!”  Bobby stomped out of the store, leaving the salesman completely befuddled.

*********

When he told me this story, Bobby was amazed that I did not share his incredulity at the obvious incompetence of the salesman.  I told him that I like to be given options and left to make my own choices.  Almost any situation that has ever involved someone actually trying to sell me something has made me feel like that person is just trying to get me to buy whatever product gives him or her the highest commission.

I told him that I have also worked in retail, and I know how annoying it is to see a customer holding Product A in one hand and Product B in the other.  They will stare back and forth between the two options as if the descriptions of both were written in a long-forgotten language and staring long enough might cause the heavens to part and God to descend and declare one of the products the clear winner.  Just as you want to scream, “Make a fucking decision already!” they inevitably ask to see Product C again.

Having experienced the frustration from both sides of the equation, I tend to do the bulk of my shopping online.  I recommended to Bobby that he try the same, since many websites will allow you to do side-by-side comparisons of different products.  This allows you to choose which features you prefer without having someone standing over you who either wants to pressure you into one product or wants you to have an aneurysm from the massive amount of concentration you are expending by attempting to decode the apparently indecipherable markings on the box.

“That’s the problem,” Bobby said.  “No one cares about the personal touch anymore.  It’s the Internet and texting and all of that junk that's to blame.”

I just shrugged and said, “I guess.”  I did not tell him that unless he was shopping at the old five-and-dime in a town where the official population includes local livestock, the “personal touch” had disappeared along with soda jerks and gas jockeys.

Throughout the next few weeks, I realized that maybe I am a bit jaded in this respect.  When I go to the grocery store, I will stand in line twice as long to use the self-checkout rather an actual cashier.  The same goes for the bank.  I have sat in a line for twenty minutes at the drive-up ATM to deposit my paycheck to avoid going through the empty teller lanes and having the teller try to sell me on opening seventeen new accounts in order to get one percent cash back at certain businesses.  I will pay more for just about anything if I can order online instead of having to actually go to a store.

Whenever I actually stop to think about this, I remember all of the science fiction movies and books I have ever seen or read.  Whether they are replicants, Skynet, or The Matrix, computers always revolt against humans and generally begin some type of apocalyptic scenario.  Even in Vonnegut’s Player Piano or Orwell’s 1984, machines are the tools of dystopian oppression.

Then I remember how great it is that I can order just about anything I want while sitting at my computer in my underwear.  It seems like a fair trade.

The Legend of Puddles and The Great Backer-Upper

As trite as it may sound, the one thing I will miss about my current job should I ever find a “grown-up job” is the number and variety of people I meet.  Sure, there are a few sort of stock characters which you are bound to see:  the sweet old lady who acts like—and quite possible is—grandmother to the world; the curmudgeonly old man who, in spite of how much you can feel his complete loathing of everyone and everything around him, you cannot help but love; the poor, confused old man whose family dumped him and never comes to see him; and although it is heartbreaking, the young people who have had extremely tragic accidents or birth defects which have required professional care.  These people are the ones that make me enjoy what I do.  Even when faced with the incredibly sad situations in which some of these people live, they make me feel good about what I do and remind me that it makes a difference in their lives.  So, naturally, this post is not about them.

Should anyone be unclear about what exactly I do for a living, my friend Matt describes it as follows:  “Mike drives around old people with his partner.  At night.  In a van.”  Another, far less creepy way to say it is that my company picks up mobility-impaired customers who do not require medical care from hospitals and drives them to nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities, and doctors’ appointments.  For the most part, our customers at night are nursing home residents who have fallen out of bed or pulled out their feeding tubes, were checked out at the emergency room, and need a ride home.  However, every now and then, we get some far more interesting characters.

About a month ago, I received a call from the emergency room at the county hospital asking us to take a customer back to his nursing home.  When we arrived at the hospital, the customer turned out to be a short, middle-aged man, and he was sitting on the edge of the gurney in his room.  The nurse said, “He just told me he needed to go to the restroom.  Do you guys mind waiting a second?”

I told her this was not a problem, and she helped the man stand up and walk to the restroom.  He was a little wobbly on his feet, but this is not uncommon with many of the people we transport.  Once he was out of the room, I noticed that the sheet on which he had been lying was soaking wet.  When he returned from the restroom, this man—whom I shall call “Puddles”— was almost completely soaked from the waist down.  Again, this is not all that uncommon.  However, as he got close to me, the overwhelming smell of stale booze was beyond overpowering.  Whether the smell was coming from the copious amount of beer which had been spilled on his shirt and had subsequently dried into a thin crust, his breath, or his urine was unclear.  It was probably a combination of all three—the “booze-breath-piss trifecta,” if you will.

While it does not happen frequently, Puddles was not the first intoxicated customer I had transported.  Nursing homes usually send the average Drunky McResident to the emergency room either because they are a danger to themselves or because they have already fallen and need to get checked out.  After a few hours at the hospital, Drunky McResident will have started to sober up and generally be content to pass out on the stretcher for the ride back home.  Of course, this time, such was not the case.

Puddles had a high-pitched voice with a strong southern accent.  He asked an almost endless barrage of questions.  There were two problems with this.  The first was that almost every inquiry began with the words “what,” “where,” or “when.”  When he would begin these questions, he would inevitably stutter over the initial “w” sound, meaning that he ended up sounding like a high-pitched, hillbilly version of the eponymous Sasquatch from Harry and the Hendersons.  “Wawawawawa…What time is it?” he would ask.  Or “Wewewewewe…Where are we?”  Or “Wewewewewe….When are we going to get there?”

Except for the one time he asked me how much farther it was to Cleveland (a city to which he admitted he had never been), these were the only questions he asked.  This was the second problem.  He repeatedly asked these questions, each time in the exact same order.  Puddles would ask his three questions, apparently find the answers satisfactory for about ten to fifteen seconds, and then return to the first question.

One of the roads that I normally take for this route was under construction, so I had been forced to take a road with which I am not quite as familiar.  Because of this, I was unprepared when I came across the railroad tracks at the bottom of what appeared to be a massive canyon running across the street.  I tried to slow down as quickly as I could, but I still managed to hit the dip going a little faster than was preferable.  Anyone who has ridden on a stretcher can attest that even the slightest bump in the road makes those things jiggle around more than an epileptic fat kid.  Hitting a chasm like that one can be downright frightening.

Rather than panicking, though, Puddles seemed to find the experience exciting, as he screamed/sang, “Like a rhinestone cowboy!”  Apparently, these were the only lyrics he really knew from the song, as he continued to hum the melody until he got to the next refrain.  “Like a rhinestone cowboy!” he shouted again.  This continued for a couple minutes until he seemed to lose interest and began his questions again.  “Wawawawawa…What time is it?”

As we neared his nursing home, an epiphany seemed to strike him.  As anyone who has ever seen the inside of an ambulance knows, the foot-end of a stretcher always faces the rear of the vehicle.  Although we drive modified minivans, the same principle applies.  This fact, however, seemed to elude Puddles, as he ceased his regular cycle of questions and asked, “Wawawawawa…What’s your name, driver?”  After I told him, he proudly stated, “Mike, you are the best backer-upper I’ve ever seen!”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “What’s that?”

“Man, we musta gone thirty miles and you did the whole thing backerds!  That’s damned impressive!”

Rather than explaining that we had gone less than ten miles and that it only seemed like we had been going backwards because he was facing the rear of the vehicle, I just said, “Thank you.”

My Superpower is Alienation

As many of my friends can attest, I have a tendency—some might call it a preternatural gift—for saying exactly the wrong thing in social settings.  I am almost never trying to be mean or upset anyone when this occurs.  Instead, there's a part of my brain that seems to say to me, "Hey.  You'll be really awesome if you say this."  This part of my brain is an idiot.  What it really means to say is, "You're going to sound like a giant asshole, and all of your friends are going to wonder why they continue to invite you out with them."

The more troublesome variety of this occurs when something shoots across my mind and I catch it before it comes out of my mouth.  Somewhere along the way, I realize it is a bad idea to say this particular thing.  However, rather than dropping the idea entirely, I will still feel the urge to say what I am thinking and try to phrase it "nicely."  This scenario leads to even more awkwardness than usual.  Most commonly, this happens when someone asks my opinion about something.  No one else will have told this person what they truly think, and so I am stuck looking like a jerk trying to explain that when I said that your haircut looks like you paid a special needs six-year-old to hack at your head with garden shears, I meant it in a good way.

One such occasion was when an acquaintance that was getting married showed me a picture of the wedding dress she was going to be wearing.  This woman is rather large, and, since no one has worn sleeves on a wedding dress since about 1983, her dress was sleeveless.  When she asked for my opinion, I told her that I thought the dress was nice but was curious if she had considered wearing a wrap.  She said, "No.  Why?"

I fumbled because I would be an even bigger jerk if I had said what I was thinking, which was something to the effect of how no one is going to pay any attention to her dress when they were so focused on those giant sacks of oatmeal that she was trying to pass off as arms.  Instead, with the grace of a manatee trying to ride a bicycle, I ended up sputtering out, "Because you might get cold."  The she reminded me that she was getting married in the summer.

In Texas.

Outdoors.

So I was left to bumble through an incredibly awkward conversation in which I finally let slip the following sentence: "I just thought you might look better in the dress if you wore something that covered your arms."

As soon as I heard the words, I knew I had made a huge mistake.  In retrospect, I know that I should have kept my mouth shut.  However, at the time, I felt like I was doing her a service by giving her the honest opinion that no one else would.  I hardly expected her to raise me over her head victoriously while chanting my name for telling her that her fat arms were going to make everyone nauseous, but I thought that she would appreciate my honesty.  She did not.  After a long argument where I tried to convince her that I really was only trying to help, I was informed that it might be best if I did not attend her wedding.

This is why I think there needs to be a service that allows people to anonymously tell others things that need to be heard.  No one likes to be told, "Yes, that tattoo will, in fact, make you look like an asshole" or "You should probably keep your baby covered up when you go out in public because it looks like a gremlin."  However, sometimes people just need to know these things, and no one will tell them.  Until such a service arrives, I suppose I will continue bearing the brunt of everyone's inability to share an honest opinion.  You're welcome.

(Disclaimer:  As I write this blog, my friends and acquaintances are probably going to notice that they will end up in here.  I hope that they will have a good sense of humor about things and realize that the ability to laugh at one's self is one of the things I love about my friends.  However, should you be one of those friends who lacks such a sense of humor, then I will tell you this:  I am most certainly not talking about you.  I meant that my other friend's mullet makes him look like a child molester.  Yours is simply majestic.)