Another Day (3)

Clearing Clouds

Aug 09, 2020

bold
black
letters
on
white
8 1/2 x 11
taped
to
glass

one among several

state mask mandate ordinance
call-in, carryout options
we care about your health
and the one I actually read…..

WE DON’T HAVE TO AGREE ON ANYTHING
EXCEPT TO BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER

First thought was…..What prompted the sign’s post?
Followed by…..Angry customer?
Then…..A collision of expectation and reality?
More…..Suffering loves company?

When I was small and fragile, an angry large man shouted obscenities in the Social Security office lobby. This was when interview areas were a bunch of desks against walls in an open room….no separation….no guards. Charlie Pride had filed for and been denied benefits no less than five times. Over and over my fellow employees explained that he did not have enough work credits for eligibility.

A supervisor decided the best way to get him out of the office was to take another application and send him on his way…..there was no amount of explaining that was going to put Charlie in touch with reality.

(What he really needed was a rhinoceros to bump him in another direction.)

I don’t trust myself to accurately recount how it came to be that little me sat across the desk from big him. Everybody else refused I guess, and I lacked the where-with-all to say, “No! I won’t do it.”

I sat across from Charlie, took his application, retrieved it from the printer, he signed it, and left the office.

And….he was back to file an appeal when he received another letter of denial.

Charlie saw no course beyond fighting with reality?

I have finished reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos. On page 167 he quotes Henry David Thoreau: