Month: April 2011

The Worst Seat on the Train

(Not to be confused with the previous blog, “The Best Seat in the House”.)

I eased myself into the train seat, which I carefully selected to reduce the likelihood that other passenger legs might intersect mine. Personal space is everything on the train.

Next to me sat a woman. The seat across from us held a number of her bags and traveling cases. I figured no one would be sitting there unless she moved all of her stuff. The woman suggested I put my backpack next to hers on the seats.

I considered her suggestion briefly, but I declined. Instead, I slid my backpack beneath my own seat. I avoid putting baggage on a seat intended for passengers, even though the woman’s baggage occupying the seat made it unlikely that another passenger would alight there.

In this instance, it may have been the wrong decision. My seat partner woman opened her cell phone and poked its numbers. She leaned into it, speaking just loudly enough for me to hear her conversation as she uncoiled her wrath.

“What’s wrong with people? This guy next to me put his stuff under his seat! Under his seat! Can you believe that? And I told him to put it next to my things on the seat! What’s wrong with people like that? Are they stubborn, just plain stupid, or what?

“I think he’s stupid! Who would do something like that, when I told him to put his backpack on the seat across from us! Maybe he can’t hear! No, he can hear me! I think he’s stubborn! Really stupid and stubborn! Yeah, that’s it! Stupid! Stubborn!”

The rant with her invisible partner continued for several minutes as I considered how to put myself out of my misery. I couldn’t possibly sit next to this creature for the next half hour.

She continued her rave. “Some people sleep! I don’t sleep! I hibernate a bit, but I don’t sleep! I’m always ‘on’! Not like this guy next to me! He must be asleep all the time! Can’t even put his bags on the seat! What in the world is wrong with people like that?”

I would have to somehow move—and soon—without incurring her wrath, so I hatched a scheme. As the train approached the next station, I pretended it was my stop, un-trundling my backpack from beneath my seat. I lazily stood up from my seat, as though it were a burden to have to get off, and ambled down the stairway. As the train disgorged its passengers, I beat a quick retreat down the length of the car, then another car, and another, never stopping or looking back until I had put several hundred passengers between my ranting former seatmate and me.

Rant on, she may, but I didn’t have to hear it.

Lesson learned—sharing cramped leg space with others is accomplished by adjusting the knees. There is no adjustment possible for vitriol and venom; they require surgery from deep within.

I’ll take the knees, please.

The Best Seat in the House

It’s a defining moment. We enter a training seminar, a classroom or a dinner party.

Where should we sit?

If we feel high in the pecking order of attendees, we’ll glad-hand folks as we arrive, asking a nonchalant, “How are you?” without waiting for responses. We take a place near the front of the room, expecting a high level of involvement.

The back of the room is reserved for those who are either anxious at the proceedings, expect to be bored, or both. Early on, these seats become crowded; these folks can gauge their degree of participation after performing extensive reconnaissance.

That leaves the “somewhere in the middle” seating, occupied by those who are either, (a.) front row want-to-bes who can ride the coattails of the super-confident sitting just before them, (b.) the last row want-to-bes who didn’t get there quickly enough, or (c.) the folks in the accidental middle ground, who must sort out how visible to be and how much obligatory conversation to generate.

It’s hard for those of us occupying this ill-defined, middle section to know how to behave. Nonetheless, it should be familiar to us because, in fact, most of our lives are spent here. We define mid-turf–we’re average folks among other average folks.

In this midsection, insecurities may filter out sentences, paragraphs, and entire conversations. Brains can become muddled over whether we are being sincere and who we really are meant to be. If we’re not careful, we can become observers, life passing us by.

I occupied this sizeable Middle Ground while attending college; no escape seemed possible.

Until, that is, I vowed to redefine the anonymous Middle Ground by seizing the opportunity afforded within the vast thrice-daily meal lines crowded with students awaiting cafeteria service.

I decided that each time I waded amidst my fellow students while in the meal line, I would intentionally meet the one person ahead and the one behind me in the queue. And I would allow myself to only talk about them—not me.

After a few months of doing this, I discovered one important thing.

The undervalued Middle Ground may offer the best seat in the house.

A Sister and a Chihuahua

I took this picture of Mike (not his real name) a few months ago. He knew I had an iPhone, and he didn’t own a picture of himself, so I took this portrait and presented him several 5 by 7 inch copies. We bonded over those prints.

Mike rides his bicycle to attend the literacy classes that I teach to parolees. He’s been faithfully attending for nearly a year, gaining remedial reading and math skills.

He is one of 18 brothers and sisters. His father, who died at age 65, was a janitor. To help the family make ends meet, all the children worked in the janitorial business nearly from the time they could walk.

Mike, who stands four feet eleven inches tall, has been in and out of prison for most of his life. Because he has no top teeth left and only a few bottom teeth remain, it is sometimes hard to understand my Zacchaeus-sized student’s speech.

His hearty laughter explodes through his broom-bristle mustache as he relates stories of his elderly grandmother, who stood much shorter than even himself; he holds an outstretched hand to his mid-chest. Other family members didn’t dare cross her; she would curse them if they did, flailing exclamatory fingers in all directions. They lived in awe of her, and she always got her way.

Last week Mike didn’t show up for classes. There were no phone calls or messages conveyed to his other parole classmates. When he eventually showed up in class this week, his eyes were bleary with weariness. He asked to speak with me in private. Though my desk is in the middle of the classroom, I invited him into my “office”. He closed the imaginary glass door behind him. When this door to my make-believe private office is closed, the rest of the class is instructed to pretend they can’t hear anything we’re saying. And they honor the agreement.

Mike’s stubby fingers tried to divert the tears flowing freely down his cheeks, as he explained why he hadn’t been in class last week. Of all his brothers and sisters (evenly divided: nine boys and nine girls), his older sister always cared for and looked after him. He relied on her completely. Now, he explained, she was gone. Last week, she had taken her own life. I sat in silence while he cried, then attempted to give comfort. I offered his weeping voice a willing ear, a feeble attempt at solace, and a Kleenex from my desk. Probably the Kleenex provided the greatest help.

He exited the invisible door to my office and settled into his day’s studies behind his computer monitor.

A few minutes after our conference, his friend, also a student of mine, barely an inch taller than Mike, entered my office and closed the pretend door to my office.

“Look after him,” he begged me. “He needs help.”

I promised that I would, and I wondered what to do next.

Postscript

Barely a day after the narrative about his sister, Mike related the story of yet another, even more recent loss in his life.

Mike lives in an old camper, the kind that fits on the bed of a small pickup truck, except his camper rests in the weeds next to the freeway, in the backyard of the person who rents it to him.

Exiting his dilapidated camper home, tiny Mike noticed his pet, a tiny chihuahua, asleep on the grass. Mike’s approach did not seem to awaken the dog, who appeared to be resting with eyes wide open.

“Suicide,” mused a fellow student as Mike related the story, unaware of the death of Mike’s sister and the irony of his comment.

Mike wrapped his beloved chihuahua in a blanket and laid her in a shallow grave. As a final act of reverence, he removed the dog’s name from the miniature doghouse and fashioned a headstone from it.

Louisa’s Place

There’s an awkward, skinny breakfast eatery called Louisa’s Place in San Luis Obispo. The restaurant seats 50 people. Like tropical fish in an aquarium, uniformed women with splashy makeup bob to and fro within the waitress station service island, which bisects the length of this long and narrow eating place. If the cheap dishware clinked less loudly, every waitress would be within easy hollering distance from any table.

The diner does one thing exceptionally well: Louisa’s Place does breakfasts. Louisa’s gastronomical evolution has produced a singularly focused harmony of eggs, bacon, biscuits, pancakes and potatoes that has won the county’s “Best Breakfast” award for three years running.

An astonishing 27 varieties of omelets crowd the menu. Conscience-searing breakfasts are so cholesterol-laden that the blood thickens whenever a waitress passes by. The stomach, fearful of being conquered by the massive portions, discharges hydrochloric acid. The heart churns into overdrive, pumping liters of blood while it can still flow. Intestines groan and belch, attempting to advance their contents before the inevitable caloric onslaught. But the nose and tongue hold the trump cards here, silencing all cautions that other organs attempt to send to the brain.

Louisa’s Place successfully maneuvers to fill a niche market that separates it from its rivals. It’s a thin slice. Competitors are on nearly every corner.

So why does Louisa’s flourish? Perhaps it’s the aquarium-like waitress station, unlike any other restaurant layout. Maybe it’s the targeted menu that rewards the desire in each of us to indulgently break our sleep-induced fast after a good night’s slumber.

There are many things that Louisa’s place is not. But that’s what makes it so very good at what it is.

It’s all in discovering and knowing the niche, the microscopic differential that separates one niche from another.

The niche is the thing. A good niche, well done, is a perfect fit.

Succeeding in our life’s journey is all about finding our own niche, discovering the appropriate fit for our nuances, traits, and the singular quirks that will turn us, uniquely and successfully, into our own version of Louisa’s Place: a place unlike any other, where friends come, enjoy camaraderie, and leave, happy to have indulged. And they’ll be back.

Who could ask for more?

Wormdom’s Wriggling Riddles

A heavy rainstorm pounded our neighborhood overnight. The next morning, worms covered the concrete and asphalt walkways like limp brown overcooked spaghetti.

It’s as if the alarms on their microscopic iSlimes all rang at once, simultaneously summoning their squirming bodies to the earth’s surface. Worms, in various states of consciousness, were everywhere. The writhing traffic jam extended for miles in every direction.

Whoever claimed that worms all look alike didn’t closely examine their wriggling bodies after a rainstorm. Some worms resembled the wet strings from mop heads, shorn from the mop and flung afar, strewn in lazy curls. Others crawled in straight lines, apparently driven by invisible GPS devices to arrive at pre-calculated destinations by the most efficient route possible.

Some fat ones had those mysterious wide and extravagant pink bands that apparently house organs that make cocoons for the eggs they lay. Somehow, they just look pregnant. There’s no worm quite so beautiful as a pregnant worm.

But why all the sudden worm traffic hubbub? How absurd was this night crawl in the rain!

Had they imagined they heard the Last Trumpet sound and hoped to not be left behind? Imagine if the entire human race imitated the behavior of these worms!

Even though worms are bi-sexual, they have to mate with other winsome worms. So, perhaps rainy weather proclaims Date Night in Wormtown, complete with a slimy pre-dawn happy hour to promote prenuptial courtships?

Some believe that the worm crawling is panic-driven. A worm in a burrow in a tsunami-intense rainstorm is a worm tangled in a knot and drowned. They’ve got to crawl out—and quickly—to stay alive.

These reasons for worms squirming from their burrows during rain are all conjectures.

Scientists tell us that the real reason worms locomote in the rain is to move to new lodgings. Since worms have to stay moist to stay alive, it’s the only safe time to crawl long distances—for a worm, that is—to explore new “digs,” so to speak. Digesting all those issues of House Beautiful magazine apparently persuades worms that the dirt must be browner on the other side of the ditch. They scurry over to check it out.

So what’s the real “skinny” on wormy wandering after a rain? There’s much conjecture, that much is certain.

It’s possible they are anxious for the future, their slimy stampede driven by disquiet and fright.

Maybe they actually do perform impassioned courtship rituals along quiet moonlight-splashed streets.

Who knows if they are panicked by fears of events unknown and the “what ifs” that could wash their lives away.

And maybe they do yearn to find that perfect life that extends just beyond their own ditch.

Perhaps the reason we try to understand these strange wormy behaviors is because, in some ways, there may just be a bit of worm in each of us.