02/15/09

02/15/09

At Vespers I was randomly seated beside an older woman in our huge university amphitorium. While we were waiting for the ‘show’ to start, the woman started an interesting conversation with me.

“Are you a dorm student?” she asked with wide, kind eyes.

“Yes. I live in Sunday.”

“Ah! Nell Sunday! I lived there for 2 years!”

“When you were a student?” I prodded.

“Yes. I had the room that had 6 windows, right in the middle of the hall on third floor.”

“I’m on third floor!”

She continued,“Nobody wanted that room because the middle room had to answer the one phone on the hall.”

“Wait, there was only one phone? For the entire hall?”

“Yep.”

“So I imagine that was crazy with boys calling girls all the time.”

“Oh, no! Boys never called the girls! That phone was just for calling home! No, boys would send us notes through note mail.”

“Note mail? Like the P.O. box?”

“No, note mail.”

“Oh, like night mail! Wow, nobody sends notes anymore. Generally people send candy and dating invitations.”

“My {the name of the old gentleman seated next to her} wrote me a note every day.”

“Aw, that’s really sweet. How did you two meet?”

“Dining Common. Back then we had required seats in the Dining Common and we were served family style. Then when dating couples would walk back from the dining common they would follow the date line.”

“The date line?”

She nodded knowingly, “Or they called it the snail trail. Back in that day couples weren’t allowed to loiter after dinner. The boys were to walk their dates back to their dorms and then say goodbye. So dating couples would walk that treck real slow.”

I never caught the woman’s name.

Right after the show ended and I bidded the woman adieu, I ran to Nell Sunday where I was supposed to wait for my extension ride to a Nursing home.

I went with my friend Katrina, who confessed she was nervous because she worried that people down south didn’t like people with brown skin and wouldn’t like her, a native of Guam, in the nursing home. The minute we walked in, I wanted to laugh, because a huge white woman in a white chair right in front of the door was holding a black baby doll. As we proceeded through the crummy, run-down nursing home, I saw Katrina’s eyes brighten as she saw that most of the nurse’s were African American.

A little service of people collected in the dining room of the Nursing Home and we were almost immediately greeted by a woman who insisted ‘we girls’ give her a big hug. I was the second to hug the woman, which meant that when the hug broke off Katrina had moved on, but I asked her what her name was. She gave me a long drawn out name and from that I remember only ‘Julie’. She was such a character. Not very old. “Guess how old I am?” she was excited to ask.

“41,” I teased.

“Hah. I wish. 57.”

Really quite young for a nursing home. I learned later that she had been abused by her husband who pushed her down the stairs and gave her brain damage.

As we sang, she leaned over and solemnly said, “You and I, we make quite a team.”

Then, from her messy little compartment underneath her walker, she pulled out a small ziploc bag of candy and said, “Here.”

“Did you want me to open it for you?”

“Naw it’s fer you, hun.”

She had a southern accent.

The preacher got up, a young seminary guy full of wind and pomp, and began to preach on the role of the Church. I looked around at the drooling faces sagging in every possible way – all shadows of the past – and wanted to laugh that the sermon was about Peter and the role of the Church.

But Julie didn’t seem to mind. She raised her hand to share with us a poem about Heaven being a beautiful place that she was going to some day. She ended her “free verse poem” with some comment about the wonderful Bob Jones University students. The seminary leaders of the extension squirmed before her simple words, looking uncomfortable and impatient, like little boys getting scolded.

As the sermon progressed, she got out her pictures and showed me a picture of her and a startlingly old woman.

“This,” she pointed with delight, “Is my roommate!” I had a sudden picture of me and my roommates and found irony in her joy over a 96 year old woman and my attitude toward my young roommates. “Here, you can keep this picture.”

My collection of things from her was beginning to grow.

She leaned over half-way through the sermon and asked me, “Are you datin a boy?”

I laughed, “Nope, I’m as single as they come.”

“Whal, I have me a man. His name is Marvin. He’d be here but he’s upstairs because his left side is paralyzed. But he told me the other day that he loves me.” She held my hand as she said this and I didn’t really mind.

“It’s nice to be loved,” I added impartially.

“You pray for me and Marvin and I’ll pray that you will find yourself a man.”

All of this, said so solemnly, so slowly, with that sweet southern drawl. And yet, she had fire in her. She had a desire to live and I heard it in her voice when she told me she was divorcing her husband.

But then she was sweet again when she held up her Bible and said that some students of BJU had gotten together to get that for her and she never forgot it. I noticed it didn’t seemed to be used much, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she used another Bible for reading since the print in that one was so small.

“I’ll bring my glasses next time,” she told me reassuringly.

As we left, Katrina nudged me and whispered, “You coming back?”

“Yeah, if you are.”

“We have to! Did you hear that woman’s poem?? Oh, they need us!” Her blind enthusiasm made me smirk and our ride home was much more animated because there was actually something to discuss that we all had in common.Indeed, the ride home is always more animated.

Fit for a King

All right. Since I delivered that hate speech for Best Buy in my last entry, I want to renew your faith in humanity by sharing my delightful Burger King experience with you.
Just kidding. No, actually I do want to talk about the great customer I received at Burger King, but it gets more interesting than just ‘I liked’ or ‘I hated’ the service.
On a whim as my stomach was growling today, I realized it had been years since I had had a Jumbo Burger at Burger King and I got a sudden penchant for one.
“Let’s go to Burger King,” I suggested to my brother.
“You’re treating?”
“Absolutely! It’s Burger King - how expensive can it be?”
After I argued with Jon that going through the drive-through was fruitless and would take too long, I convinced my brother to park his little white car, and I put all of my shopping purchases in the trunk (since I considered the Burger King to be “junky”).
Once inside, memories of being a young child and looking up at the HUGE Jumbo Burger signs came flowing back to me. At about 4 ft. tall, the dewy lettuce on the burger looked positively life-like, and the juicy tomato seemed to be nigh unto slipping off the burger and falling atop me. The Burger King I used to go to also had a train that was attached to the top of the wall and the train would “chug-chug-choo-choo” around the entire restaurant. That was really cool. Mind you, it was even cooler, because my parents would rarely let us go out to fast-food because my Mom was (and is) what you call “a good southern, home-cook”. We had home-style meals. Back then, I thought it was a curse from God. Now I can see it was actually a good thing.
So as I ordered, the woman at the cash register was helping someone else out by getting them a cold coffee drink. She winked, “This here’s really good stuff. I made it fresh this morning and it’s better than the other cold coffee across the street. It tastes like chocolate milk and it’s so creamy; I love it.” She then poured it out of a clear pitcher for the lady and I could practically hear the cream as it swished into the glass.
What I loved about the homely woman behind the counter was the fact that she was talking to us like she had known us forever. She was giving her honest opinion, and one could tell just by the skip in her step that she was happy, determined, and full of life. I liked her. She wasn’t over-doing it and she wasn’t annoying. She just WAS. She seemed happy with herself and she could find humor and delight in little things.
As I got my own ‘cold Jo coffee’ (I couldn‘t resist it), whopper jr, etc. and found my seat, I looked around me and noticed that almost everybody in the store was old. They were all chomping on their burgers with their gums and looking around through bifocals. Strangely, I found it comforting. Too many young people my age these days are annoying to be around. I am one young person who will admit for my generation that we tend to be self-focused, we have lost sight of what the work-ethic is (in other words, we want money for doing nothing), and we are very impressionable when it comes to pier pressure. Most people my age hate old people. But I like them. They’re cute. And sometimes they’re really interesting when they start telling stories and stuff. Growing up my parents drilled into me, “respect your elders!”, and I’d say that’s a pretty good policy to have. How shallow is it, anyways, to look down on someone just because they happen to have lived longer than me? So for that reason, I don’t understand a lot of people my age. After all, how would I feel if a little 13 year old came up to me and said, “Screw you!”? I’d get up in that little kids face and ask him where his parents are PRETTY fast.
ANYWAYS, I’m enjoying getting off subject, lol. Jonny’s chicken fries looked really pathetic so I offered to get him a couple more burgers (you know how it is with fast food), and went up and ordered them. As the lady charged me a whopping $2.11, I told her frankly (not gushingly at all), “You know, you have really good customer service.”
Her face got just like mine has gotten when I’ve been told that before. “Oh, really?” She seemed so encouraged and she said matter-of-factly, “The guy two guys back wouldn’t have said that.”
“Well, some people are idiots,” I said staunchly, and then suddenly noticing that there were a couple of guys beside me still waiting for their food. Oops.
An older black man with fine little white curls of hair and good sized glasses was standing behind me in line, and said, “Well, I wouldn’t say it, either.”
I could tell he was joking and turned to him and said, “Shame on you!”
He clarified, “I was going to say, you have SUPER customer-service!”
I laughed and so did she as she got his order. As I stood there waiting for order ‘179’, I heard the black guy to my right make a joke about something being like Brett Favre leaving the Packers. I thought his joke didn’t make any sense and so I thought, ‘obviously the guy doesn’t know much about football’.
He saw the way I looked and said to me, “You don’t watch football, do you?” It wasn’t a question. It was like he KNEW.
I shrugged. “Actually, the only team I’ll watch is the Packers, but since Favre is gone now, I don’t know if I want to watch them.”
He had a loud voice and guffawed, “Aww - you can’t do that! No, no, no.” He pulled up his sweatshirt so I could see his ‘Lakers’ fanny pack and insisted, “You gotta pick a team and stick with them! I’ve been with the Los Angeles Lakers for 17 years straight now.”
I was interested in the conversation now, and looked at him, surprised by this strangers absolute calm and good-natured-ness. “So, what do you think about Favre leaving the Packers and going to the Jets?”
“I think,” he said emphatically, his words all ready chosen, “I think that it doesn’t matter whether Favre is with the Packers. He’s maybe not chosen the best way of leaving, but the Packers are still worth watching.”
“But,” I said, quoting something I had once heard, “Think about how the Packers were doing before Brett Favre came along. To me, Packers is Brett Favre, and Favre is Packers.” My brother had a good joke that on the Packers timeline, it would have to read “BF” AND “AF” (“Before Favre” and “After Favre”). I was going to insert this joke, but he charged ahead passionately.
“Where was Brett Favre when Vince Lombardi was running the team?”
“Training,” I guessed decisively.
He repeated his question and I said the same thing and then knew I must be wrong.
“You still don’t have the right answer.“ He scoffed, “You don’t know football, do you?”
“I only admitted to watching an occasional game. All right. I confess! I am a sentimental fan!”
“Well, at least you confess to it, that’s something,” he laughed. I got my order then and called, “Thank you!”
He waved, “Have a good weekend.”
“Y’too!” I said laughingly, and Jon and I trucked out of the old Burger King. I heaved myself into the car and laughed to myself.
“Why are you laughing?” Jon asked.
“I just like that Burger King. Why has it taken us so long to discover that place? It was virtual gold mine of good-natured people!”
Honestly? The whoppers weren’t that great. It was the atmosphere that made it.