At the gas station this week I saw a guy who was wearing an
Air Force uniform, rare in my part of the world. I was guessing he was a
recruiter making the rounds of the high schools and if so, they picked a good
one. He was tall, dark and handsome---like Tom Cruise in Top Gun---and he carried himself with the kind of swagger that
comes from knowing who you are and what you can do. I guess Tom isn’t all that
tall but why spoil my illusions with facts? The point is my younger self would
have followed Mr. Recruiter anywhere if he’d have given me the slightest
encouragement. Surface-to-air missiles shooting
at me? No problem as long as you’re there, too. Now, I just wanted to sit Mr. Recruiter down in front of a painting easel and preserve his killer smile on canvas.
“Let me get that door for you, ma`am,” he said making me bask in the warmth of his
brown eyes. Sometimes it pays to look like a weak old woman. “Thank you, sir,”
I replied and I wanted to add, Could I
interest you in sitting for a portrait? God, if I didn’t have an
imagination, I’d have no life at all!
I saw my orthopedic doctor this week, too, with the hopes
that he’d cut me loose from post-surgery restrictions. No such luck. I have to go
back in a week to see if the shot he put in my shoulder joint relieves the pain
I’m getting in my bicep. If it does significantly, I’ll get a shot of “super
gel” that should give me relief for a year or more. At least now I am cleared for
picking up things under ten pounds. It’s a start, though I still can’t bench press.
I don’t know if that’s a joke my doctor is making or he actually thinks gray-haired old ladies like me are into body building, but he makes a point of telling me
that every time I see him. Fortunately, by nightfall the day I got the test
shot, my pain level had fallen from a seven to a one which means the super gel
junk will be worth the $500 out of pocket cost. Yeah, team!
My driver’s license this year had to be renewed in person at
the Department of Motor Vehicles and I was really sweating the experience. My
eyes have been bothering me all winter and I suspect the cataract the doctor, last
summer, said wasn’t big enough to get removed will be when I see him next
month. It’s been a lot of years since I was required to renew my license in
person, rather than by mail, and when the lady at the DMV checked my eyes I couldn’t
read the first two letters to save my soul. Oh,
shit! I said to myself and when I use the ‘S word’ you know I’m really upset.
But then I realized I could see the rest of the letters in the line and I
rattled them off, presumably with enough rattled correctly because I passed the
test. I must have passed the ‘racial profiling’ test, too, because they didn’t
ask me to show proof of citizenship like the renewal form that came in the mail
said I had to bring along.
Lines at the DMV are notorious for being long and the
process can eat up an hour or two so I brought along a book. I picked one from
my library based on two factors and two alone. It had to be light weight and it had to
have big print because I didn’t want to strain my eyes. The book I grabbed was
one I evidently had for a college course on theology or philosophy that I took back in
the ‘70s. I could almost deny I ever read it but it was filled with passages
underlined in yellow with a generous amount of notes in the margins written in
my hand writing. One passage went like this:
“Self-knowledge, so universally praised as the most valuable, remains worse than useless if it is based solely on the study of one’s own inner experiences; it must be balanced by an equally intensive study of Field 3, through which we learn to know ourselves as others know us. This point is too often overlooked.” (E.F. Schumacher)
The chapter goes on to talk about how we are unaware of the “swing
of our pendulums.” Our mind’s eye edits out what we think is contradictory in ourselves and we think we are showing ourselves to the world in a clear
message. It gives a great example to illustrate the point; if we take 50
photos of ourselves we’ll throw out the bad ones forgetting, of course, that
others see all our states of facial expression, not just the ones we deem are
the best. Same with our personalities. Others see it all---the good, the bad and
everything in between, but we don't don't like to acknowledge that.
Which gets me back to Mr. Recruiter. What did he see when he
opened the door for me? He was in uniform which dictated he had to present
himself with the decorum of an officer. Was that all that was on his mind? Or
did he think he’d get into the gas station faster if he helped me with the
door? Did his mind wander to a grandmother he doesn’t visit often enough?
E.F. Schumacher may think it makes a difference how he saw me but, to me, if a
smile from a stranger can brighten up my day and fire up my imagination, I
could care less if he thought I looked and sounded like a gray tree frog during
mating season. ©
