Today was a hard day. Sophties are so green right now...I just keep reminding myself it’s job security. Didn’t have things ready, second chances, still not ready. L4Ls are broken, or left at home, or they forgot to charge it. Chaos. Then got caught behind a bus that stopped, I kid you not, every hundred yards for about six miles. Errands and so forth just tedious....
Then I met Jim King. But I didn’t meet him until after I’d passed him standing on the right corner of the driveway from Publix as I turned right onto Martin Downs to go to the post office. After I got stuck in school zone flashing lights for three miles stretch on 714. After I had time to consider what his sign said: “My family needs a little help” and after I realized he was missing a leg, standing there in the 4:00 Palm City sun, not a cloud in the sky. Instead of turning into my neighborhood, I circled back up to Publix. He was still there, standing tall and straight in his pale cargo shorts, white tee-shirt, faded ball cap down to his glasses. I parked in the shade by the CVS because of the eggs.
I greeted him as I approached and asked how he was doing, he needed a chair and an umbrella. He agreed. He had a nice face and warm smile. I asked about what kind of help his family needed. We talked about his service in the Marines, how his wife could no longer work, he has only a small 40% pension, the two of them travel to Tallahassee for medical visits so really, he said, it’s mostly just needing gas money. I gave him what I could.
We chatted about how teachers and veterans seem to be so very necessary in our communities and yet we are disregarded on so many levels. Told him I wanted to encourage him that many of my students will be able to vote this year and they know what’s going on and they are not having it. He said he hoped they could bring about the change we all need just to be able to make ends meet and plan for the future. His service predates 911 so he’s not eligible for the Wounded Warrior. They’ve tried all the avenues they can find, said his wife has been real good about sending off for everything that comes up offering services or financial help.
Told him twice in the course of our ten minutes in that blazing sun that I appreciated his service. Stretched out my hand and introduced myself and that’s when he told me his name is Jim King, but people call him “Gunny.” He said he’d be back in a couple of weeks maybe at that location, maybe at another. Generally people in this area, he said, seem to be kind and generous for which he is grateful. Such a calm, warm, centered person.
If you see a veteran standing at attention in the blazing hot sun for hours on end, you know they’re for real. Be kind. If I see him again I plan to hit him up for some stories. First introductions seemed a little unthoughtful to ask too many questions.
On the way home I realized my day wasn’t all that bad. I work with pretty good people and kids who are maybe a little green but every day they’re exposed to stories that hopefully open their eyes to the world around them, learn to take more and more responsibility for their own lives and cultivate attention to being helpful to those who could use some kindness and appreciation.
While we’re here, we may as well look out for each other.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Protect and Serve
Last night as I pulled onto my driveway and opened the garage door, my mother texted me an update of some medical tests she had that morning. Nothing serious, but troubling, choices to make, life. I read the text as I slowly floated into the garage...misjudging the space only slightly, making it wholly inconvenient to get out of the car and into the house. The text further distracted me from emptying my pocket of the little case that holds credit cards. I don’t normally take it inside the house because I’m liable to forget it...
Hate it when I oversleep like I did this morning. Throws off the whole routine. Complicated by the new Fall line-up on tv I DVR’d. On top of that I was distracted by a number of things—wanting to be sure I packed the car with yoga stuff for after school, having to make lunch which should be part of the routine but not quite yet... Barely going to be able to leave on time... I remembered the case of credit cards, put it on top of the car and scootched through the narrow space between car and crap by the wall of the garage to get to the trunk to put in change of clothes, yoga stuff, birks—had to put on tennis shoes. Lunch—normally take it in the cab with me but, hell, I just threw it in the back, too.
Oh wait, it was also garbage day but really, look at the time. Dammit. I decided to wait to take it out next garbage day. Oh my story! I can listen to the book club novel on the way to school. Perfect. I squeezed into the car, slid precariously behind the wheel, opened the garage door, opened the library AXIS 360 ap on the phone, set up the book to play/stream through the digital wi-fi system (whatever) in the car—clicked on the phone icon on the car monitor, then blue tooth—still a novice so it took concentrated effort but I got it to work, backed down the drive in the pitch black, pre-dawn morning, headlights beaming, and went on my way.
To back out of the driveway and proceed takes that three-quarter turn you learn first thing in driver’s ed, because I have to negotiate a strange added turn in the street at the end of the driveway. My street has a hairpin turn a block away, then I have to turn left onto a busy-ish street with the bumpiest connection, drainage curb to the road, then the road eventually and slowly bears to the left. I then got into the right-hand turn lane and something popped LOUDLY onto my dashboard—I thought the garage door opener had fallen from the visor. Nope, the thing was OUTSIDE! On my windshield!
OH SH***—it was my credit card case!!! I punched in the emergency blinkers—I mean, this was the start of morning rush hour! Even though it was rather pitch dark, even though the moon was full but low on the horizon. OMG. I jumped out of the car, waving people around me and grabbed the case—it was partially open and all the cards WERE GONE!!! Nowhere on the windshield! Did you know there’s a little space at the bottom of the windshield big enough for credit cards to fall through???? That’s where they had to be, I thought. But, this is a new enough car that I had no idea how to open the hood!!! Had to be a latch down left of the steering wheel near the floor, right? So I crouched down to look for a lever or something. The story was playing loudly inside the car and I was a bit freaked knowing I was at that corner to turn right with people coming around...I couldn’t think straight—somewhere subliminally my brain was trying to tell me the phone had a flashlight on it but before I could think that, as I’m touching every lever and squinting for clarity in the dim street light, a police officer’s blue light began to spin around me and suddenly the cop says out his passenger side window “Mornin’—you okay?”
“Yes but I left my little card case on top of my car and somehow got this far before it fell down into the windshield and I think all the cards fell into the engine area and it’s a new car and I don’t know how to open the hood and this is crazy, right? I mean, I live like a mile from here, how did that thing stay on top of the car this long?” I said all that with the requisite hand motions, of course.
Meanwhile he had gotten out of his vehicle and had come around to where I was standing. THAT’s about when I remembered the cell flashlight because he had a flashlight. He was calm and I was calmish, explained again that I just wasn’t sure where the latch was on this car. He aimed at the area I had been probing. There it was, plain as day, that hood lever thing. He pulled it and started around the door to the hood and THEN I SAW THEM under the light of his flashlight and car lights! They were all strewn underneath our feet! We were STANDING ON THEM. It was hilarious but I wasn’t yet feeling the funny. I was feeling the stupid. He had just started flashing the light looking in the engine and my phone light was on the street. “LOOK!” I exclaimed. “There they are!! There they all are!!!” I picked them up and put them into the case and he brought the flash light back around as I put each card back in it’s little accordion file and he asked me if I was sure I had them all and I recited, “Yep, two credit cards, school ID, library card, AAA, Barnes & Noble, gotta have that, and I think really that’s it. I only care that I got the credit cards and ID.” He asked again if I was sure and he bent way down, hand on the pavement, and looked all down under the car and then shined his light back up through the street. That was a fabulous flashlight.
“Yes, sir, that’s really it, I’m sure. Thank you so so so much for coming by when you did and for stopping to help. I appreciate you so much.”
“Glad I could help,” he said. We got into our cars and went merrily on our way. I remember he was the police officer who helped me several years ago when the Mazda flat out died one morning right around the same time of day. I had called AAA and was waiting and he stopped and chatted with me awhile. It might have been a flat tire or the battery, I don’t really remember, I just remember he was very nice. SRO for the elementary school nearby.
I like to think this is why men and women enter the police force—to be able to help folks out of trouble this mild, all the way up to protecting people from mortal dangers as well.
Oh, yeah, there’s actually an epilogue—about three hours later, visiting the small group discussions going on in first block, a wonderful sophomore said, “Ms Ballard...” I turned to her, thinking she had a question but suddenly she looked kind of sheepish. “Um, I think maybe your cell phone flash light is on.” I keep the cell phone in my back pocket. Visions of lightning bugs from my youth toyed with my imagination.
And so it goes—another school day in paradise. Grateful for friendly, helpful police officers and brave, kind sophomores.
Hate it when I oversleep like I did this morning. Throws off the whole routine. Complicated by the new Fall line-up on tv I DVR’d. On top of that I was distracted by a number of things—wanting to be sure I packed the car with yoga stuff for after school, having to make lunch which should be part of the routine but not quite yet... Barely going to be able to leave on time... I remembered the case of credit cards, put it on top of the car and scootched through the narrow space between car and crap by the wall of the garage to get to the trunk to put in change of clothes, yoga stuff, birks—had to put on tennis shoes. Lunch—normally take it in the cab with me but, hell, I just threw it in the back, too.
Oh wait, it was also garbage day but really, look at the time. Dammit. I decided to wait to take it out next garbage day. Oh my story! I can listen to the book club novel on the way to school. Perfect. I squeezed into the car, slid precariously behind the wheel, opened the garage door, opened the library AXIS 360 ap on the phone, set up the book to play/stream through the digital wi-fi system (whatever) in the car—clicked on the phone icon on the car monitor, then blue tooth—still a novice so it took concentrated effort but I got it to work, backed down the drive in the pitch black, pre-dawn morning, headlights beaming, and went on my way.
To back out of the driveway and proceed takes that three-quarter turn you learn first thing in driver’s ed, because I have to negotiate a strange added turn in the street at the end of the driveway. My street has a hairpin turn a block away, then I have to turn left onto a busy-ish street with the bumpiest connection, drainage curb to the road, then the road eventually and slowly bears to the left. I then got into the right-hand turn lane and something popped LOUDLY onto my dashboard—I thought the garage door opener had fallen from the visor. Nope, the thing was OUTSIDE! On my windshield!
OH SH***—it was my credit card case!!! I punched in the emergency blinkers—I mean, this was the start of morning rush hour! Even though it was rather pitch dark, even though the moon was full but low on the horizon. OMG. I jumped out of the car, waving people around me and grabbed the case—it was partially open and all the cards WERE GONE!!! Nowhere on the windshield! Did you know there’s a little space at the bottom of the windshield big enough for credit cards to fall through???? That’s where they had to be, I thought. But, this is a new enough car that I had no idea how to open the hood!!! Had to be a latch down left of the steering wheel near the floor, right? So I crouched down to look for a lever or something. The story was playing loudly inside the car and I was a bit freaked knowing I was at that corner to turn right with people coming around...I couldn’t think straight—somewhere subliminally my brain was trying to tell me the phone had a flashlight on it but before I could think that, as I’m touching every lever and squinting for clarity in the dim street light, a police officer’s blue light began to spin around me and suddenly the cop says out his passenger side window “Mornin’—you okay?”
“Yes but I left my little card case on top of my car and somehow got this far before it fell down into the windshield and I think all the cards fell into the engine area and it’s a new car and I don’t know how to open the hood and this is crazy, right? I mean, I live like a mile from here, how did that thing stay on top of the car this long?” I said all that with the requisite hand motions, of course.
Meanwhile he had gotten out of his vehicle and had come around to where I was standing. THAT’s about when I remembered the cell flashlight because he had a flashlight. He was calm and I was calmish, explained again that I just wasn’t sure where the latch was on this car. He aimed at the area I had been probing. There it was, plain as day, that hood lever thing. He pulled it and started around the door to the hood and THEN I SAW THEM under the light of his flashlight and car lights! They were all strewn underneath our feet! We were STANDING ON THEM. It was hilarious but I wasn’t yet feeling the funny. I was feeling the stupid. He had just started flashing the light looking in the engine and my phone light was on the street. “LOOK!” I exclaimed. “There they are!! There they all are!!!” I picked them up and put them into the case and he brought the flash light back around as I put each card back in it’s little accordion file and he asked me if I was sure I had them all and I recited, “Yep, two credit cards, school ID, library card, AAA, Barnes & Noble, gotta have that, and I think really that’s it. I only care that I got the credit cards and ID.” He asked again if I was sure and he bent way down, hand on the pavement, and looked all down under the car and then shined his light back up through the street. That was a fabulous flashlight.
“Yes, sir, that’s really it, I’m sure. Thank you so so so much for coming by when you did and for stopping to help. I appreciate you so much.”
“Glad I could help,” he said. We got into our cars and went merrily on our way. I remember he was the police officer who helped me several years ago when the Mazda flat out died one morning right around the same time of day. I had called AAA and was waiting and he stopped and chatted with me awhile. It might have been a flat tire or the battery, I don’t really remember, I just remember he was very nice. SRO for the elementary school nearby.
I like to think this is why men and women enter the police force—to be able to help folks out of trouble this mild, all the way up to protecting people from mortal dangers as well.
Oh, yeah, there’s actually an epilogue—about three hours later, visiting the small group discussions going on in first block, a wonderful sophomore said, “Ms Ballard...” I turned to her, thinking she had a question but suddenly she looked kind of sheepish. “Um, I think maybe your cell phone flash light is on.” I keep the cell phone in my back pocket. Visions of lightning bugs from my youth toyed with my imagination.
And so it goes—another school day in paradise. Grateful for friendly, helpful police officers and brave, kind sophomores.
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