So, we'll call one of the guys I work with, "Mike." His pride and joy is his truck.
Mike is one of several people from our team who decided to get engaged within a few months of returning from our most recent trip around the world. About a month after this, he and his fiance learned that they were expecting a new little one. That was worth a few weeks of freakout, and all of us learned that there probably is no good way to ask the person you love for a paternity test.
If there is, please, someone share.
Last night, Mike was down in Tacoma visiting his mom. Mike doesn't like that his mom lives in Tacoma; he thinks it's a bad neighborhood. The fact that his truck was broken into and pretty much every item of value removed while it was sitting in the lot for her apartment complex did nothing to improve his estimation of the city.
I actually had never seen Mike that mad before. I'd seen him flat-scared, I'd seen him burned, I'd seen him hoping the bad fallout from some recent mistake would land somewhere else - we see all of these when we go on deployment with people. But, when he showed up for work this morning, he was so mad he just told me he couldn't talk around me.
(This is twofold. One is that most of the guys have a practice of keeping their language clean in my presence - I never asked for this, but I do appreciate it. The other is that Mike has some views about the people living in this neighborhood that, if vocalized, would get him fired in a very bad way. Our employer does not take kindly to anything that sounds like racism.)
Mike came in carrying a small paper bag - the one article of value not taken by the thieves. At the time, I wasn't at all surprised - looking at the bag, I had guessed that it held a breakfast pastry. Turns out, that was actually his and his fiance's wedding bands - he'd brought them down to show his mom when he visited her.
And by the end of our pre-work morning meeting, Mike was actually laughing again, cheerfully complaining because the thieves hadn't had the decency to clean all the trash out of his car. "If you're going to rip me off, at least be respectful about it!"
And while that might sound a little crazy, that's actually how we deal with a lot of crud. We know we're lower down on the ladder, and a lot of rough stuff rolls down to us. We know that we're in a position of service, and sometimes serving is really hard. You don't find a lot of, "Look on the bright side!" or, "Be thankful for the dirt!" Not seriously, anyway. But there's a really common theme to find humor in a bad situation - fully acknowledging that the situation is unwanted, but it's here anyways, we can't do anything about it, so let's make fun of it!
And somehow, I'm really thankful that we've learned how to do that.
There's so much to be thankful for.
Mike is one of several people from our team who decided to get engaged within a few months of returning from our most recent trip around the world. About a month after this, he and his fiance learned that they were expecting a new little one. That was worth a few weeks of freakout, and all of us learned that there probably is no good way to ask the person you love for a paternity test.
If there is, please, someone share.
Last night, Mike was down in Tacoma visiting his mom. Mike doesn't like that his mom lives in Tacoma; he thinks it's a bad neighborhood. The fact that his truck was broken into and pretty much every item of value removed while it was sitting in the lot for her apartment complex did nothing to improve his estimation of the city.
I actually had never seen Mike that mad before. I'd seen him flat-scared, I'd seen him burned, I'd seen him hoping the bad fallout from some recent mistake would land somewhere else - we see all of these when we go on deployment with people. But, when he showed up for work this morning, he was so mad he just told me he couldn't talk around me.
(This is twofold. One is that most of the guys have a practice of keeping their language clean in my presence - I never asked for this, but I do appreciate it. The other is that Mike has some views about the people living in this neighborhood that, if vocalized, would get him fired in a very bad way. Our employer does not take kindly to anything that sounds like racism.)
Mike came in carrying a small paper bag - the one article of value not taken by the thieves. At the time, I wasn't at all surprised - looking at the bag, I had guessed that it held a breakfast pastry. Turns out, that was actually his and his fiance's wedding bands - he'd brought them down to show his mom when he visited her.
And by the end of our pre-work morning meeting, Mike was actually laughing again, cheerfully complaining because the thieves hadn't had the decency to clean all the trash out of his car. "If you're going to rip me off, at least be respectful about it!"
And while that might sound a little crazy, that's actually how we deal with a lot of crud. We know we're lower down on the ladder, and a lot of rough stuff rolls down to us. We know that we're in a position of service, and sometimes serving is really hard. You don't find a lot of, "Look on the bright side!" or, "Be thankful for the dirt!" Not seriously, anyway. But there's a really common theme to find humor in a bad situation - fully acknowledging that the situation is unwanted, but it's here anyways, we can't do anything about it, so let's make fun of it!
And somehow, I'm really thankful that we've learned how to do that.
There's so much to be thankful for.
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