I so enjoyed my streaming, don’t-lift-the-pencil-style of writing exercise this week that I’m doing it again. Here it is, just as it comes from my brain. Unfiltered, unplugged, who cares what people think...
***
“Have you ever seen such a sight? They take up practically every square inch... The filthy, noisy... Honk! Honk! Honk!” I stop my thought process abruptly. Those words, “take up practically every square inch..., filthy..., noisy...” Where have I heard those words?
For two days straight, wave after wave of Canada geese have been passing over our little community. One day they are flying north, the next day south, sometimes east or west. I’m talking about thousands upon thousands of birds, with seemingly no direction. So, that it kind of gives you the creeps, like the seagulls, sparrows and crows in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds. There are just too many of one kind in one space.
***
Before retirement, I’d made it my sworn duty to treat each person I worked with with the exact same level of courtesy and respect, from the president of the organization to the entry-level mail distributor. Because I am a benevolent soul who sees the face of God in everyone I meet? I wish that were true, but it’s actually a more selfish reason. It’s because you never know when you’ll need help, and if you’ve treated someone with the dignity each being should be accorded, you will more likely be treated in kind. My interpretation of the golden rule.
Down the long hall from my office, was the university’s “facilities” department’s office. So central was this department to my job that, to this day, I have dreams, and even the occasional nightmare, involving it.
It was a crowded little office with about eight employees from the director of facilities, (who, when he was around, which didn’t seem to be often, always wore a velour sweatsuit - but that’s another story) to the entry-level person who took the telephone and email requests for a “work order.”
The “work order”- what can I say? Nothing, and I mean absolutely no piece of work was performed at the university without a proper work order. It didn’t matter if I wanted a light bulb changed or I needed a banquet set up for a visit from the Cardinal, it all began with the all-holy “work order.”
Since they were just down the hall, instead of phoning, I often strolled down and placed my requests in person, with a bit of schmooze thrown in for good measure. Lars (not his real name), was the request taker. He was a young, gay black man.
Over the years, I came to know Lars and his story, because that’s what happens when you are courteous to people, they begin to trust you and thus open up to you. Lars had the misfortune of being born to an ultra-conservative, ultra-religious family of wealth. For his brothers this was a blessing. They became lawyers and CEOs, as they perfectly fit the mold of his parents’ expectations. For, Lars, in his words, “was born unhappy with my gender assignment.” In his family’s religion being gay was strictly forbidden. They had even sent him for a month to one of those gay-deprogramming centers, where he told me the “counselors” nearly convinced him that there was “something wrong” with him.
When the deprogamming failed, Lars took a job at the university where he could take part-time classes which would hopefully result in his being accepted at law school. His last hope to one day reclaim his parents’ love and respect.
The week of my summer birthday Lars and Bryant, a young black man from the mailroom, offered to take me to lunch in thanks for my kindness to them. Bryant was a quiet, reflective young man from the inner-city. As I recall he wrote poetry in his spare time. The university had a generous tuition reimbursement program for its employees and you’d have been hard pressed to find a fellow employee who wasn’t working on a degree of some kind, from undergraduate to PhD. Bryant was working toward his Master’s.
I don’t remember where we went for lunch, but I do remember driving by a large plot of Chicago Park District lakefront property. It was a hot summer day and the park was filled with people. And that is where I heard those words...
“Will you look at that? I am so sick of the damned Mexicans. They take up every square inch of park space! And their loud blaring music. Filthy garbage left everywhere...,” says Lars.
“I swear I’m going to stay away from you, Lars.” Bryant replies after a moment of quiet introspection. “You get me thinking like you. How am I, a black man, going to think negatively about any race? I know better, but when I’m around you, I’ll be damned, I start thinking like you.” Lars throws his head back and laughs, "You know I'm kidding, right?" We all sit quietly with our thoughts.
***
I look up the topic of the explosive growth of the canada goose population on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website. They address it with this comment:
...we support humane efforts to reduce the overpopulation of resident Canada Geese...Not all communities may choose to reduce goose populations. But conflicts will only continue to grow if measures are not taken to curb the runaway growth of these birds.
I’m one of those souls who thinks diversity is healthy, something that is good for all living things. Too many of one kind in any given area gives me the creeps. But, I’d be opposed to taking measures to force a change. Who knows, maybe one day if the human population explodes, the powers that be will decide to start “humanely” curbing humans. It’d be just my luck they’d begin by eliminating all gray-haired grannies
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