It is a good time to lay awake and think. You know the wonderful places that leads you! Mine has taken me down a road of remembering how I started DoorDashing in February and soon found myself a bit upset because of how hard I found it to get to know anyone while I worked. It was not just because I was in and out so fast from place to place, but because people are generally in a hurry to get back to their work and move the faces in front of them along. It is a volume business. I like to get to know people individually. I have not worked like that for years and forgot, I guess. I also think there is a difference in attitudes. I tend to be old friends with everyone I encounter. But to be fair, I have been out of the world for so long as I have been at home with my kids, teaching them for so long. Immersion into the city was always going to be difficult. And what’s more, it is a college town. There are a lot of young people, and they have recently gone on summer break. That has meant many of them have gone home and the people who I meet at each restaurant have changed. I think the people who are DoorDashing have changed as well.
Over the course of things, I have gone from finding it difficult getting to feel acknowledged by anyone with whom there was mutual familiarity, to finding that at last, to losing it all again. This has all happened in about six months. There are some. I know a handful of people by name, and believe you me, I really cherish them, and that I can walk into a few places and feel welcomed by friends. Christina at Mandarin Garden, Avery and Darby at Beehive Grill, Caelyn at Chick-Filet, Kyleigh at Juniper, Venus at KFC, and then there are the few whose names I don’t know, but faces are familiar, and friendships are mutual, like the guys at the two Seven-Elevens, and the Linebacker who works at Jack-in-the-Box. A person wants to think that if they fell off the Earth, some people would notice, and maybe think for a moment, “Hey! I liked that guy,” before moving on to the next customer.
Maybe on some level I just want to be the guy who walks into an establishment and everyone yells “Norm!” Only it’s me. It’s a way of establishing meaning. It’s a way of feeling like I matter. But as the college kids have transitioned out for the summer, and the faces have changed so much in the last couple of weeks, I feel like it has all been a hard-fought road for nothing, largely. I am back to square one with a lot of it. I do really appreciate those few people who smile when I come in, and say “hello,” like they are happy to see me. I am so happy to see each of them!
I did for a while recognize other Dashers as well. I had a few faces among them who I felt like I was getting to know. It is also very transitory, and at the moment I can only think of a guy who speaks not a word of English that I have seen recently that I can say we smile and say our hellos. It is in a less linguistic and more fist bumps and smiles kind of way. As for the rest, the faces have changed, and all the effort I have put into holding doors, trying to get to know names, and making sure I keep my place in line and that staff at restaurants acknowledge others as well as me, has been lost. I mean, it is still my way, but the people who appreciated those efforts from me three months ago are gone like the dust in the wind, or last summer’s rains.
Customers are just names on the phone screen in this line of work. I know porches and remember what some people have expressed in their instructions, and the little tricks to finding their addresses. Those feel like nuances of doing the job. I have always tried to make the customer experience one of them ordering their food, and just like that, it is at their door, easy to get to and not in front of a push out screen, or in a pile of insects or where the cat has got to it. It should be effortless for the customer. Of course, where I actually meet them face to face, it is always friendly and enthusiastic!
There are also the people who are ‘in the way,’ for a lack of a better term. There are the movements through doorways and in lines at counters. I hold doors for everyone. I am never in too much of a hurry to be polite, to say my P’s and Q’s. That is obligatory to living in a society.
I wish I could say all the same about the actual driving experience. It is a good thing that I am not able to bless people’s food in the language of the driver’s seat. I think I could have restarted the plague by now. I see so many people who are not looking up while they drive. Not like, in numbers, but in a large percentage. I sometimes feel like I go from road to road where there are dozens, to back roads where the only other car in sight is the one right in front of me who is determined to drive everywhere ten under the speed limit. It is not conducive to my personal happiness. But of course, my personal happiness is not society’s obligation. So, there is that; relevant to all of what I have said so far.
I am not where I want to be.
That is the summary statement to all of this. We have our bills fairly under control. Our expenses are kept to a minimum, and I feel constantly as though we are barely scraping by. That contributes to a feeling of insecurity that is threatened by the state of the car, which is in turn threatened by its age, the hot weather in summer, the slick roads in winter, and so on. I put money in the bank only to watch the grifters take it out in the name of the electric bills, the water bills, the tax bills, and so on. The President has passed his Big Bill that will cut medical coverage, and food assistance. The medical concerns me, but the food we have not taken help on. I never have since my mom was raising me on her own in my early childhood. It’s a matter of principle, I guess. Even if my pavers are in poor shape, I have always paved my own way the best I can and have found help with family where I have been able to work to personally repay my owing. But right now, I feel like my wheels are spinning and I am going nowhere at all. It is just trying to keep the tent up in the wind. As long as it does not fall on me or the people I love, then that is enough. And it is. It really is enough to at least feel some sense of accomplishment and happiness, and purpose. My little family means the world to me. I like to help the boys when they need it, or to spend time with the girls giving them appreciation for the art they create, or my wife, for everything in the world that she is to me, and that is everything. She is my ultimate sense of ‘home.’
The heat is extra hot right now. The politics suck. The world feels like it is on a verge of collapse and that there are millions trying to bring it down. To what end I do not know. That contributes a sense of farce to everything that already feels farcical. Walking next to a guy at Sam’s Club and making a brief comment about how crazy things are in the shop, and he says to me that he just wants to get out his nine-millimeter and take out all the stupid people. I laughed and said “well, I guess I will say goodbye then, as I am the closest one!” Obviously in such a scenario, I would be the first to die. Is that a common feeling among the people I meet every day? Are people so basic that they think elimination is the solution? Does nobody appreciate the complexity of getting along with others? Does nobody appreciate the value of diversity of people and opinions? His jest did not reassure me at all. Neither did his “no! Not you!” As if! A couple of words exchanged makes it too personal for him now? But no words exchanged between him and others is okay for him to judge the value of other’s lives on? Gimme a fucking break! We are not cattle. We are individuals. We are people. We have lives. WE have families. We have people we love, and those who love us. Those of us who feel like we don’t do need to be reached. Our lives are a one-time event, and should be the best they can be, deserve to be. We should be united in making the world better for all, rather divided so some few can take more of everything for themselves at the expense of the rest.
Alas. Here we are. Give me a tree. I will make something of it. That is what I want to do. Give me a camera. I will make you an image, or a memory. Give me a page, I will make you a poem. Give me a fleeting moment, I will do everything in my power to give you a smile, even if it is just as fleeting. It was there, and that is what matters. Give us a handful of notes and we can enjoy a song together. Give us sunshine and some dirt and some seeds, and we can have a meal, security, and the feeling of bounty. Let’s get a few trees together and build us a house, and a fire inside to drive out the winter cold. There we can enjoy the images and poems and art that we make. We all have our value, and we all can make more together. As you can see, my winter is the loneliness of the world at large, and the fire is my drive to make it better for the people I encounter, and especially those I have in my family. Whoever taught me that growing up, thank you!
I need to get some sleep now. It is coming around to three in the morning! I was feeling a bit sleepy as I worked yesterday. It’s no good that I am setting myself up for such a day again. I woke up and just needed to get out some of what is inside me. It may not go to the world, but it is out of me for now. It is expressed. And that matters to me.
