I was driving home in my car from Wal-Mart, a bag filled with prescription meds and some food staples on my back seat. Frozen on my seat by a long red-light back-up, he came walking down the median toward me and the idling, persistent autos all around. In his left hand he clutched a predictable cardboard sign. He was unshaven (by a few days), tall (about 6'3"), dressed in black khaki shorts (dusty), a gray tee (sweaty and too tight around the middle), and a decent pair of gray socks with New Balance shoes (dude, what are you doing?) -- and he looked to be about 50-60 pounds at least, maybe more, overweight. I studied the spectacle for a moment. Not many others in cars and trucks seemed to notice. Apparently conditioned to this sort of encounter, the man failed with most of present a symbol of hunger or neediness or anything triage bad on this afternoon. I relaxed my hands on the wheel a little. But I prayed to anyone who happened to be eavesdropping on my Sirius channel that this guy would not seek eye contact with me.
I furtively peeked at his cardboard. -- On the Way Home on the Road. Need Money. All Will Help. God Bless.
I groaned lightly. In a few words, this stranger had managed to sum my life story with a Sharpie and a box top. Yours too I ask you? I memorized the words of this roadside plea. On the way and need money. Get in line, my man. All will help. Next time, don't dress like an underemployed but superfed supplicant. Planning is crucial. Nonchalance takes points off one's final panhandler grade. The cardboard stalker had nothing apparently in which to collect his random contributions. So, he was not anticipating a big haul that day.
This was somewhat like an incident years ago, when I was performing in small spotlights here and there, when a young woman named Becky approached me between acts. Several hours had flown by since the lights had dimmed and all of us had first gathered for the show.
Becky was suffused with color. She informed me about what kind of work she did. Smiling she said 'Thanks to this night and you, I now know what I want to do.'
'What's that?' I asked with little enthusiasm. I am an introvert. Breaks between acts are almost always welcome. Putting myself out there on the line in front of others usually knocks me down and twirls me to a loopy state, even just a smidgen of putting it out there.
Becky paused, grinned coyly, sought eye contact. 'I want to do everything exactly like you do it. I now know. I want to do what you do.'
Silently I prayed, ever the cynic on my Sirius frequency, 'O Lord, why is it always this way?' -- To my new best friend I said: 'Becky it's a good thing to want to conquer something one loves to do. You look like a can do person. It takes one thing after another after another, girl. How do you get to Carnegie Hall the old joke says? Practice. Practice. Practice.'
With just a hint of stale and conventional humor one often can squeeze out of such sticky predicaments.
Later, when someone else had finished performing back in Becky Town, she called me on the cellphone. She told me that the same Becky had turned up for a weekend late show with a boyfriend. She seemed to get into it with vigor. But behind the curtains, amidst backstage shadows, while fingering inquisitively my friend's CDs for sale, 'She said that when she saw what I did and you did it looked so wonderful, like everything that she ever wanted for herself, for her own career.'
'Oh Lord,' I prayed again in a whisper, gazing at my long-time friend's furrowed brow. 'She has no idea what a ride she might be in for.'
'Dude. Word,' my professional pal noted.
As my car idled at the red light today, I realized this would never actually take place. But to contemplate it is a rush. I push out of the driver's side door, leaving it ajar and the motor still running Toyota softly. Someone nearby says from the inside of a rumbling Ram truck cab, 'Hey, what's the deal?' I accost the road wanderer. He steps back with one foot, his mouth comes open slackly, and the man drops his sign. It slides into the street. I subject him to a pithy harangue of two or three sentences at the most which I have not rehearsed: about social conformity, predictable stereotypes, and failing to give one's all, total focused effort, till the last scene in the final act of the drama. Then I get back in my vehicle as horns honk all around and other car operators negatively salute me via their middle fingers. Road rage begins to turn really ugly.
An unsmiling but sincere lady approached me quietly in a hallway at work the other day. Having observed two brief presentations that I have conducted during recent weeks, she asked me about this technique and that technique that she thought she saw me using, and inquired about how I had learned to put them subtly into practice. Surprised by her close observations, I mentioned that she was pointedly correct. She said she wanted to know because if she tried this and that it could make her way, way better at what she offers to the world. The amazing factor to me was that she was still trying. Not in a perfectionist way that I could detect, and I am no expert on such things. A professional like me nearing the end of the year-after-year dusty and sweaty road of workday journeys, she was seeking to get better at what she does and what she should do well. C'est bon. Let it go, all the way, push downfield. I envied her energy and her inquiring mind that yet wants to know.
So there it was instantly before me when I caught sight of that miserable, third-rate cardboard wish list in the guy half-trying to squeeze society's generous hand. You, sir, must stop it. Trying. Improvement. Effort. Striving. Wishing. Just do it. But no cheap grace and no lethargic cons will be permitted on this side of the street. All of us are taking the long walk and heading some place that's a veiled mystery. Sometimes I wonder what became of earnest Becky and her easy smile. As it goes in the touching books and movies, we are each On the Way Home, On the Road. Need Money. All Will Help. God Bless. Hopefully it is not the fabled road to perdition. Contributions to the cause can all be handed to me personally and/or sent to my post office box. Or, better yet, all goods can be aimed electronically into the sweaty tee of my direct deposit account (and thus my debit card, instantaneously), like the archer's arrow true.
My cardboard sign declares -- Need money, need more time to do it all, here; don't we believe at times that it is so? All you give to the great work will help. God bless you, brothers and sisters.
##################
No comments:
Post a Comment