Dateline: The Last 11 Years
“I love meeting new people; I think everyone has a story to tell. We should all listen sometimes.”
Kim Smith
Big or small, short or tall, wide or skinny, no matter what shade of us, no matter what creed or language, of all the living things on this planet, people are my favorite things.
Us humans, my favs.
Now I love dogs, Shih Tzu’s especially, cats, um, not so much, cool with birds especially parakeets and eagles, I’m a gold fish and 49-cent tropical fish loving kind of guy.
Love animals in general and if I had enough money, or lawyers, my career would have been going around the world and opening the cages and setting them free.
Especially love us people who are stamped and filed as “low expectations,” and if I had enough money, or lawyers, I would open their cages and set them free as well.
I vote life, I vote happiness, I vote peace, understanding, and inclusion, I vote for the serfs and against the kings.
I vote for the kind in man, and I know it’s out there because over the last 11 years with B.A.S.S. I have stood in the registration line and met America and many other countries, up close and personal.
That’s because in my time here in this gig, I have shaken 10,000 hands.
Ten thousand.
Somewhere in this room of the folks who signed up to be Marshalls at the last gig, somewhere in the sea of raised hands is the 10,000th hand I shook.
Over the past 11 years I stand at the last table in the registration line, the table of B.A.S.S. hats, and hand every person who comes through several hats and I say exactly this, “Hey, what’s your name, where you from and what do you do there?”
Three questions said 10,000 times, said in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the South both Deep and Florida, the Midwest, the Southwest, the West Coast and Gulf Coast.
Said in big cities, small cities and tiny little towns.
“Hi, what’s your name…”
“…where do you live…”
“…and what do you do?”
And this is how they answered.
“I…
…worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.
…I’m a plumber.
…I’m a school teacher.
…a nurse.”
I’ve met cops, sheriffs, FBI agents, secret dudes at the NSA, dozens of correctional officers, two probation folks male and female.
I’ve met firemen/women, EMTs and a helicopter pilot who gets the life line in and out.
I’ve met people from every branch, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine.
I’ve met train engineers and truck drivers, met airline pilots and a tug boat captain.
Met teachers and students, high school and college. Met someone from the Peace Corp and an inner city YMCA gym teacher.
Met every shade of us, hundreds of nationalities, dozens of beliefs.
Such a privilege to meet the absolute cross section of America, one handshake at a time.
“Life is beautiful not because of the things we see or do. Life is beautiful because of the people we meet.”
Simon Sinek
I came here not a fan of us, Homo sapiens in general, in fact I had so little faith in us I started calling all of us, Homo finalis, an experiment with no future.
Standing in a B.A.S.S. line shaking hands with you changed all that.
I was taken, and sometimes overwhelmed by your kindness, your honesty, overwhelmed at how humble you were when I asked “What do you do?”
Plumbers, factory workers, lawn care guys would look down and whisper, and I’ll always remember the look of the tool and die guy when he whispered what he did and I said exactly this, “Thank you for that man, thank you.”
I said “Thank you for that man/ma’am, thank you,” to pipe fitters and doctors, even said it to a guy wearing a New England Patriots tee shirt (I’m a Buffalo Bills fan). I said “thank you” to the person on the end of every hand I shook, and I think we all should do that, I saw it made both of us happy.
“That’s the whole point of life, you know. To meet new people.”
Sherman Alexie
There will be a lot of stuff I will miss from this gig, but right up there near the top of the missed most will be standing in line and shaking your hands.
For there it was never about me, but you and the gift that you gave me: faith.
Faith that when all the shouting, name calling and labeling runs its course, that the simple act of extending a hand and asking…
“…what’s your name…
…where you from…
…and what do you do?”
Will bring us all back together again.
It did for me.
db
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Aseop