Noticing Little Things

I wasn't planning to blog today. I didn't wake up with any particular subject gnawing at me. I didn't really have anything to say. But then I went to lunch. At McDonald's.

I had to run out at lunch to get an important legal document in the mail and since I was using some of my lunch time to do it I figured I'd just grab something while I was out. There's a MickeyD's between where I work and the Post Office so MickeyD's it was. As an aside, McDonald's just introduced a "Country Style" Chicken Sandwich and they were giving them away free with a large drink. I don't know what's country about them but basically they are an attempt at a direct imitation of a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. It wasn't bad. They came close to the original Chick-Fil-A but didn't quite get there.

Anyway. I had some time and instead of getting it to go I thought I'd eat there rather than in my office and do a little people watching. So I was sitting in a booth eating when this young guy comes around the corner heading to sit with the rest of what looked like a work crew that he was with. As he's walking his full drink cup tips off his tray and spills across the floor. Hey, no harm, it can happen to anybody. His response was to look toward the rest of his crew, laugh and say "My Bad." He then proceeded to the table. My hope was that he would put down the tray and alert someone at the counter that there was a spill so that it could be cleaned up before someone slipped. My expectation was that he would sit down and eat his lunch without taking any responsibility or doing anything to to clean up his mess. He fully met my expectation.

I was just about finished eating and was planning to tell someone about the spill before I left when I noticed an interesting thing. One of the other guys in the crew, from appearances a little older than the first, went to the counter and told the employee working there what happened. They reacted immediately and sent someone over with a bucket and mop and cleaned it right up.

Completely inane story so far I know, but what made it noteworthy to me was this. Based purely on observation and assumption, the first guy - the one who spilled the drink - I guessed to be either American or highly Americanized due to his appearance and complete lack of accent when I heard him speak. The second guy, the guy who actually did something about the spill, was clearly Hispanic and based on hearing him speak, did not appear to be particularly fluent in English.

Now I realize there's a lot of information I don't know about these individuals. To be completely fair other than the few minutes of observation taken as a snapshot of their lives, I know absolutely nothing about them. I'm also not trying to make any statements about race, ethnicity, culture, prejudice or any of that. As I was watching, the whole thing for me was about one person's failure to accept responsibility and another's action to take (or in this case assume someone else's) responsibility.

I wasn't intending for this to be a statement about the immigration issue but because it appeared the second guy may have been an alien (no, not the extraterrestrial, newly Vatican approved kind) I can't help but think about it at least a little. Truth be told I'm not really sure where I stand on the issue. I mentioned yesterday that I'm a Pisces. The symbol for Pisces is two fish heading in opposite directions. We are often taken to be someone who can't make a decision. The truth is we hesitate in making decisions because the world is not black and white to us. We frequently can see, often very clearly, BOTH sides of the argument and find merit and deficiency in each. Immigration like so many other issues has no easy solution but the one thing that I AM ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN OF is that the United States of America has no business building fences or walls. Beyond that, I'm open for debate.

Enough rambling. I guess my point to this (if I ever had one) is that a hard working guy who steps up and takes responsibility for someone else's spilled drink might, just might, be the kind of guy who will step up and take responsibility for other more important things as well. There seems to be so few of those guys around these days. Honestly, I don't think it hurts to have more of that kind of guy. But what do I know? I was just there for the free chicken sandwich.

Small Signs of Our Decline

I went to a very small college. 1400 students total. One of the benefits of going to a small college was that you got to know the faculty pretty well (that actually was both a blessing and a curse, depending on the particular faculty member). There were no TA's teaching, in fact I don't remember there being TA's at all. I was a biology major and the head of the biology department was Dr. Meredith. Doc Meredith was pretty easy going and soft-spoken and he had the affinity for dumb jokes that all science teachers seem to have. There was a folksy, aw shucks intelligence about him that reminded you of Andy Griffith or Will Rogers.

One day I was in the department office for one reason or another and Doc Meredith was there with a package that had been delivered to him. He was looking around the desk for something to use to open the box. Now when I was growing up every male in the house carried a pocket knife and I was no different. It was a natural thing to me. I got in the habit when I was around eight years old and I've carried one ever since. Naturally I reached into my pocket and produced my knife and handed it to the good doctor.

He looked at the small knife in my hand, smiled that small smile that told you something was coming, then he looked at me and said, "Why, Bruce. You are an educated man."

Well, I was in college in the hopes of becoming educated but I didn't really know what he was talking about so I responded in the manner that any college freshman-aged educated man would. I said, "Huh?"

He proceeded to explain, just as I knew he would, that back in the days when writing was done with a quill dipped in ink, the quill had to be frequently cut and sharpened in order for it to hold the ink and write properly. This cutting was accomplished with a small knife kept and carried specifically for that purpose. The knife became commonly known as a "pen knife". Back then the vast majority of people did not know how to read nor write. The only people that had "pen knives" were those who had and used quills. The only people who used quills were those who could read and write and the only people who knew how to read and write were those who were educated. I carried with me a pen knife, one of the early earmarks of one who was educated, therefore I was an educated man.

It's interesting to me that I had entire semester-long classes in college that I have absolutely no recollection of but the parts of my education like the pen knife story will stay with me for the rest of my life. Strange.

The reason I relate this story to you now is because I was reminded of it last weekend. My wife and I went to Washington, DC for a couple of days for her birthday. We spent the day Saturday walking around near the Capitol and hitting a few of the museums on the Mall. We were about to enter the Library of Congress when I remembered that in this post 9/11 world it is impossible to enter government buildings without first going through security. I have reluctantly gotten used to leaving my pocket knife at home or in the car when I travel by air but I had completely forgotten about the security checkpoints in our public buildings. I really wanted to see the exhibit but I didn't want to have to give up my knife for good. We had traveled by Metro and were too far from the hotel to go back. Hmm. What to do? My wife suggested hiding it outside. It was a Saturday. It was cold. There were very few people around. Sounds like a plan to me. That's what I did. I hid it as high up as I could reach on an out-of-the-way ledge around the corner from the entrance, then retrieved it when we came back out. My wife is a genius. Fortunately, there wasn't much security to speak of in the other buildings we visited that day so I didn't have to resort to knife hiding again.

My point to all this is that from time to time (often when I'm standing in my socks in an airport) I am slapped with a reminder of how far we have regressed. A reminder of what we have lost. When I was a kid we trusted eight year olds with pocket knives. Then the terrorists struck on 9/11 and put us into shock. But that which we lost was not taken away by the terrorists. They acted. We reacted. That's what this country has gotten really good at. Reacting. Usually with a jerk of the knee and little to no thought. To be responsible means at its root that we have the ability to choose our response. We could have chosen to respond using reason, and education, and intelligence. We could have responded in so many ways. But we responded, and continue to respond blindly with fear of a boogieman that our government constantly reminds us of. Our response was to take off our shoes and stand in our socks at the airport. Our response was to accept that our bottles can't hold more than three ounces and that the stock of the companies that produce one quart plastic bags went up. Our response is to reach in our pocket and hand over the sign and symbol of an educated person. In many ways, for me at least, it's the little seemingly insignificant things that speak the loudest. On Saturday I heard that one loud and clear.