Damn, this is my life. It seems so funny to me. Seriously, I didn't really want a job so regulated and strict. But, here I am in one of the most anal positions possible. heh heh...I just said that.
There are many aspects about my job that I do like, such as the fact I work with a few very good friends. This is also sometimes a downside, but today I think I will go with the positives. Why not?
I really like our donors that come in. I have been able to get to know many of them pretty well in the 5 years that I have been there. Sure, sometimes they get confused by my white lab coat and they think I am actually certified to help them get through their problems, but then again...I think they just want someone to listen who doesn't really know them, or at least not in the context of their every day lives. Free therapy, I suppose. Or, better than that even, we pay them for their time.
People have such great stories. Poor folk, that is. Some folks have really had to struggle in their lives just to get to this day we are all sharing, and a lot of people (people who have, and always have had) just don't get that, you know?
It is so easy to dismiss the dirty guy who lives under the bridge. But, you know the dirty guy is named James and he has three kids that he hasn't seen in 10 years. His wife died of cancer and he was laid off at the factory. There wasn't a whole lot of work for a 'man like him,' and reality became something to escape from.
His kids moved in with his mother so he could move up North to do some farm work, kind of migrant worker style. He wasn't making enough to keep himself going and send to the kids, so he did without mostly...well, he did start to spend a little money on booze.
One day he fell asleep in one of the rows of corn under the hot July sun, and under the influence of some Wild Turkey. The guy driving the tractor didn't see him and accidentally ran over James.
While he was in the hospital recovering from a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and a damaged spleen his mother died of a stroke, and since no one could find him, his kids were put into foster care.
About this point his life truly fell apart. We all take a downward spiral plunge, and he was no different. Some of us never hit rock bottom, some do and stay there till they fade away. And some people, by the miracle of some kind of hope, are able to climb and scratch their way back up. James said he "floated back to his senses, as if we was being lifted."
So, now he is spending the Summer living under a bridge about a block down from where I work. He shares it with a couple of other guys who 'fell through the cracks.' They're old veterans who really should be medicated professionally, not from the bottle. They usually leave him alone, but he has to keep an eye on his money, because they will steal it.
He will be saving up for a bus ticket South to see if he can find his kids. Most of his income will come from the trash the college students leave out in their yards or stacked in the alleys...beer cans, stereos, computers, vcrs, dvd players. Seriously, instead of going through the trauma of actually moving their belongings they just leave them on the curb. I suppose if mommy and daddy paid for everything once, they would probably pay for it twice, too.
Oh, well, it helps the "bottom feeders" as the "top floaters" like to call them. I try not to call either of them anything. They are just us, you know, people getting through life the only way they know how. I am not one to put any judgment on them, us.
We are weaving a story as we go, and the story is what fascinates me the most. We all have such wonderful, beautiful, tragic, meaningful, dull, mundane, enriching stories. And somewhere there is a thread that links each of the stories together. And there, in that thread, is the answer to the question that we don't even know we are asking..."why are we doing this?"
Because that is how the story goes.
Peace.
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