Kindness, I confess, was not what was welling up inside me as I sat through my son’s first high school track meet last week. Tears, yes, and some anger. But what ultimately burst forth was a realization that Mr. Mean Man at the Ticket Booth Holding Rigidly to the Rules had handed me a valuable reminder: that there is no way to divine the depths of stress so many people are swimming through these days and that, given the opportunity to choose curtness or kindness in my dealings with others, I need to try harder to latch onto the latter.
Mr. Mean Man had no way of knowing when I arrived at the entrance to the track meet, with its sign requesting $5 and with my having only three $1 bills in my purse, that I had left the office in the middle of the afternoon, stressing about the still hours of work awaiting when I returned, about the impending fourth round of layoffs at the paper, about the paper’s new computer system that’s proved more difficult to master than Mandarin Chinese, about the way my job requires that I anger potentially 1,200 people each month when I choose 280 letters that aren’t theirs to run in the paper, about watching my son with physical disabilities try to throw a shot put in the first track meet of his life, about what I would cook for dinner, about the number of frozen pizzas my children have consumed in the past two years, about whether I’d get home in time for my Wednesday night Bible study, about choosing my son’s first track meet over my daughter’s second-ever lacrosse game.
He had no way of knowing about the horrendous traffic I had fought all the way up Six Forks Road and the way I had driven round and round the parking lot of an unfamiliar high school, looking for the elusive track. He couldn’t have known about the high school kid I had asked for directions, only to be sent down a dead-end road.
He knew nothing except that he had in front of him a high schooler’s mom who was $2 short.
Me: Oh, no. It never occurred to me that it cost money to get into a high school track meet.
Him: It’s $5.
Me.: I have $3.
Him: It’s $5.
Me:
Him: You must have never been to a high school track meet before.
Me: No, my son’s in ninth grade. This is his first.
Him: Well, it’s the same, no matter where you go. It’s $5.
Me:
Him: Is there anybody here you can borrow $2 from?
Me (thinking: How would I know? You won’t let me in): I really don’t know.
Man behind me in line: I have some extra cash.
Me: I appreciate that. But you know what? My son is just doing the shot put. It’s the first event. I’ll just stand here and wait for him.
Him: “Not here you won’t. If you’re going to stand here, you have to go stand behind that wall.”
That just pretty much stands there all on its own, doesn’t it?
I wordlessly (I promise) sat down behind the wall and dug through my purse, through the gum wrappers and hair balls, and found enough pennies and nickels to make up my $2 shortfall. Let all of the Rigid Rule Enforcers of the World rejoice. Perhaps it goes without saying that they counted it out to the last cent.
Maybe now, though, I’ll do a better job myself of remembering that, these days more than ever, we all have our stories and our stresses and that sometimes $2 is just $2. Go on in.
