I totally deserved it. The experience was sobering.
Sometimes I am in the vicinity of people that don’t hit my radar screen. My monkeysphere is rather small. (Wow, that probably implies that my brain is small……... Oh well, that’s no revelation.)
We have a janitorial person who comes in the evening and empties the trash in our offices. I’ve never paid her much regard other than to be quite freaked out at times because she wonders around having conversations with herself. I will admit to noting at least once, as I passed by, that she was in the break room, possibly very upset. But I didn’t take the time to see if I could do anything for her. I didn’t even take the time to confirm that she was maybe very upset about something. I was at work after all and I’m just a machine. Actually, that’s arrogant, I’m not even the whole machine; I’m just a cog. (Sarcasm? You. Bet.) Really, I just didn’t want to risk getting pulled into a long drawn out drama. There was this thing called work and I had to go do it.
It means I’m just one of the herd. I am, in fact, no better than some of the people in our department that have a nickname for this lady. They call her Jingles. Jingles because she has keys clipped to her belt or on her lanyard or someplace, that jingle like Christmas bells when she walks. We always know where she is because we hear the keys jingling. Well that and we hear her talking to herself. Which she does, but I did note recently that she wears an earpiece and sometimes walks around talking on the phone and only appears to be talking to herself. That was the day she was in the next stall of the bathroom talking while using the facility; which sorta freaked me out too.
So don’t call me while you are using the can. Please?
And that is absolutely all I knew about Jingles, whose name is Brenda, it turns out, before this afternoon. All I knew other than the fact that she drives a really junky vehicle that leaks oil all over the parking lot. A mess that gets really slick when mixed with a little rain and all the bird crap that litters the IT parking lot.
It turns out that Brenda has a really tough life. When my coworker was describing her life I said, ‘So she has spent her life existing, instead of living.’ Then I got that feeling in my chest that makes it hard to breathe.
We were talking about Brenda because I was getting ready to throw out some food that I had purchased for lunch and decided not to eat. My coworker said, ‘Wait a minute, don’t throw it away. I will see if Brenda the janitor lady wants it. She doesn’t have much in the way of food and she might like to have that.’
I said, ‘Are you sure, it doesn’t look very good?’
Then she started telling me all the things she knew about Brenda. I mentioned her vehicle and my coworker said, ‘You know that car was destroyed in the tornado. She lost everything and was living in some camper last time we talked. She didn’t have much before she lost it all. She doesn’t have any family around here. She has some adult children that live in Texas, but she doesn’t get to see them very often.’
I said, ‘To be honest, she makes me a little uncomfortable when she goes around talking to herself. I worry that someone like that will snap and where do you go then?’
Here is the part where I was shot off my high horse……
My coworker, a dear friend and a very nice lady said, ‘You know, one should be careful not to judge, you just never know what people are enduring. I know people here make fun of her and they really shouldn’t. She is just trying to get by the best way she can.’
True that. It never occurred to me I was being judgmental. I was just confessing that the woman makes me uncomfortable. But even if it’s bloody honest, I should have kept it to myself. Little things we say can unintentionally make a big impact on another person’s perception.
We all go through shit. Some of us punch a heavy bag. Some of us drive like a bat out of hell. Some of us yell at our loved ones. Some of us cuss like a sailor. Some of us cry. Some of us drink. Some of us do all of the above. And some of us walk around talking to ourselves.
You deal with the poo that is flung in your direction in whatever way that keeps your heart from exploding. And none of us should judge anyone even if they are clinically insane. Some people were just built (or learned) to cope with flying poo better than others.
And there my friends, is where the rubber meets the road. I stand humbly chastised and ask for your forgiveness.
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