Humbled Today...

I was humbled today.


This may sound really stupid but… here it goes anyway.

There’s this maintenance man in our building. He’s short, chubby, black (not that any of that matters, I’m just painting you a visual picture.) And he has a real knack for making the women in our office building uncomfortable. I’ve decided I don’t think he means to do this… he just doesn’t have the gift of tact. He’s extremely social (although I would not describe him as “bright.”) If you see him in the hallway, you will have a drawn-out conversation with him, try as you might to just move along on your merry way. But I think the discomfort comes from the sneaking feeling that he’s looking you up and down as he talks to you. It’s just… uncomfortable.

At times it’s afforded me great amusement. From my post at the front desk I hear a lot of what goes on in the hallway just outside my door. And every day at four he comes to our floor to clean the bathrooms, which means I get to hear every awkward encounter he has with every woman who walks by (or worse) unintentionally goes in to use the bathroom during that time. To date, the most hilarious instance was when T (from our office) walked out towards the women’s restroom and noticed he was just about to walk in with his cleaning cart.

“Oh,” she said, “I’ll just go use the one on the second floor.”

“Go on!” he bellowed. (It sounded more like “Go own” lots of emphasis on the word “on.”)

“Oh no, that’s ok…”

“Go own!!” he interrupted. (Not meanly… more just insistently.)

“No really…”

“Go oooooown!”

I kid you not… I listened to them go back and forth like this about ten times total. I was almost rolling on the floor with laughter. It was just so hopelessly awkward. Neither one would give in!!

So…

Back to me being humbled.

I rode the elevator down to the first floor today to drop the mail off and just as I turned the corner to ride the elevator back up to my office… guess who I met head-on? Yep. Ol’ what’s-his’name.

Inwardly I prayed, “Please don’t let him be riding the elevator,” as he looked me up and down and said,

“HI! How you doin?”

“Good.”

“What brings you all the way down here?”

“Just delivering the mail,” (Please, keep walking.)

But no… he was waiting for the elevator with me.

“Crap,” I thought.

Just then, the door to another office suite opened and a lady entered the hallway. (“Hallelujiah, a buffer!” I thought.)

And do you know what that lady did? She greeted him warmly and enthusiastically. She greeted him first.

“Well, hi!” she said, “How are you doing today?”

“Good,” he responded, “How you doing?”

And then she looked him closely in the face (something I always avoid doing) and asked, “Did something happen to your eye? “

To this he responded that he’d been in a wreck on his bike when the roads were icy last week. She sweetly ooohed and awwwed and listened as he recounted the story. Our elevator arrived right then, so as he climbed on he told her, “I’ll be back down.”

And somehow as I rode the elevator with him… I no longer felt creeped out or awkward. I felt like he was just another one of God’s children. Just like me. How dare I view him as I had… like he was some lesser being who carried the plague. How dare I? I just felt so humbled by that woman’s humane treatment of this man. She wasn’t overly caring (no more than any of us would/should be for a fellow human)… she was just kind. As we all should be.

Like I said… I was humbled.