The Official Song of My Life
Please read this first
Today something magical happened.
Background:
I work at a hospital as a patient transport and handyman. PSA is the official title. It has been really interesting working there with, I guess you would call them blue collar workers or the support workers of the hospital. Like other patient transporters and house keepers etc. My dad also works at this hospital as a vascular surgeon. So I hear about all the stuff going on amongst doctors and the administration and physician contracts at the dinner table. Now I hear about the other side of things. It has been so fascinating to see the different mentalities people have and the way they think and what they talk about.
I work until 7:30 but everything generally dies down around 5. So I do some cleaning and then steal the current Newsweek from the anethesia office and read it in the PACU or the very posh physicians lounge if all the doctors have left.
Nicky, my fellow extra-op PSA works second shift. With about 30 minutes left of my shift, she calls me on my work phone and tells me to come to the cafeteria where she is on minute 45 of her 30 minute dinner break with some house keeping staff. I fold the Newsweek and put it in my pocket.
The Cafeteria is closed and mostly empty except for us. Someone is vacuuming in the far corner and pop music from approximately 6.3 years ago is playing. The conversation is typically filthy, talking about Nicky and her escapades with other workers that haven’t really happened, but it is just lame, half-hearted joking because there is just nothing else to fill up the silence with. I have found if I am quiet long enough, someone will always say something whether it makes sense or not. We are a bunch of white people talking about Nicky’s baby daddy and all her boos on the different shifts. She awkwardly insists that I am her favorite. Then Mike, Danny, the house keepers, make lewd comments, jealous, I am sure, that they are not her fake, favorite boo.
Then the conversation turns to Nicky’s pending departure to Texas. It is like it is scripted.
In this job, there is so much small talk that it makes me wonder why people bother to actually go through the motions of talking. The exact same cliche is used in or out of context and the most obvious or ignorant statments are made and received like profound insight. I have been working on my small talk skills. I talk a lot about topics that I have thought about or care about and I will talk when I think someone might listen. Like in rare conversations where people are discussing ideas and listening to what the other person is saying not just waiting to speak. I am terrible at small talk and, after making myself look like an idiot for most of middle school, I don’t say something just for the sake of saying it. I have been working on it, but right now people at work think I am quiet because I didn’t get the cliche script. I don’t mean to sound bitter or insulting. It is just sad that day in and day out people spend time around each other but don’t really engage in eachother’s lives.
Anyways, back to the cafeteria. Nicky is moving to Texas. The conversation goes something like this:
Lady: “Whoo, it’s going to be hot down there.”
Nicky: “Yep, I know.”
Mike: “At least you’ll be in Houston. That’s a good part of Texas. It’s not like Mexico or something.”
Nicky: “Yeah, I am excited for the southern Bar-b-que There is something different about the way they make the bar-b-que. I had it when I was in North Carolina and I can’t wait to have it there.” Apparently, Texas and North Carolina share the same food culture.
Lady: “I wonder what they do different with it.”
Mike: “They put cole slaw on their burgers.”
Nicky:” Probably something with the spices.”
Mike: [louder] “I know they put coleslaw on they burgers.”
Lady: “Shut up you weener. We are talking about barbque not burgers.” I did not edit that. She actually called him a weener.
The conversation raged on about southern barbque for a long time. I sat there sort of soaking in the silliness of it all and the blessing of having different experiences with all kinds of people. Then, as if on que and suddenly louder, “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve comes on. Instantly I am thrown back to my first couple nights in Argentina and the guys I hung out with for that week and of course Amilio’s remixed disasters. I had sat there half understanding their argument about in which countries women had the best of each body part, thinking the same thing and heard the same song.
I probably should apologize. All these details and I don’t really have any super profound epiphany. It was just the night and day difference of the two situations. The crazy variety of people that the two tables, the two memories contain were suddenly connected by that song. Suddenly humanity seemed so small. From Buenos Aires to Westerville, people are people.
They say that you can judge what it is that you serve, worship, and live for based on 3 things: What you talk about the most, where you spend your money, and how you see people. Do you seem them as souls, as individuals? Or as furniture in your life or tools to get something. Like the people who hand the food out the window at Wendy’s, the people driving slow in the fast land with their blinker on, the waiter at the chinese restaurant whom you can’t tell apart from Mao Zedong [if you know who that is].
If we are going to understand life, we should be students of people. We should thirst to hear as many life stories and listen to as many rants as we can handle becuase they are are the outflowing of a soul marked with the fingerprints of it’s creator.
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