Christmas Eve is the night normally celebrated by the Germans, so Thomas got a full dose of that with the Christkind arriving and giving gifts while we were playing upstairs. Funny, Nicole was downstairs, you would think she would have seen something, but she says she did not.
So we had a nice dinner, and then Christmas morning we woke up as a family and I made my patented omelet with peppers and cheese, and we had bacon with it (of course) and milk and.... well... it was a good breakfast.
All I had to do on Christmas Day was fly the 1450 flight to Baltimore and back.
We were an hour and a half late getting into Baltimore. I went upstairs to use the bathroom and find out if we had any delays going back to ORD. When I was standing at the podium, a woman came up to me and we had this exchange--
"Excuse me, are you the pilot flying us to Chicago?"
"Why, yes I am."
"I need you to fly carefully."
"Ma'am, I am flying this flight home to my 3 and 1/2 year old son and my wife, I will be flying carefully."
"My sisters and I are flying to Chicago where our brother is on life support, They are keeping him there until we can get there to say goodbye."
<longish silence... slow intake of breath>
--in a much lower tone of voice----
"Well, Merry Christmas. There is nothing that I can say that will make the next few days any better for you, but believe me, I will get you safely to Chicago."
How often do we go about on our days and have no clue what the people around us are going through?
When I broke my collarbone skiing (way back when,) and could not fly for 2 months, I took a job in customer service at FTD.com. Basically we took orders, but we also did some troubleshooting, etc, when people invariably screwed something up with the online order system.
The coworker who was sitting next to me had just had some terrible news about her brother, and that he might not make it through the night. I was still fielding calls (I was Easter and Mother's Day help,) on the service exchange, when I had a caller (who, btw, had ordered everything online, so the only way to screw this up was if he did it himself) who said that the flowers he sent to his mother did not make it there on Mother's Day, and it was a tragedy for his mother.
I told him "No, sir, a tragedy is my coworker, whose brother is possibly dying right now, and will probably not make it through the night. What you are going through, is just a Bad Day."
And then I hung up on him.
But really, what if Mother's Day had a special meaning to them? What if his mother had escaped death on Mother's Day, and this was how they celebrated every anniversary?
How often do we see people who are short-tempered and we think the worst, when the reality is that they are having a horrible run of luck, or just lost their job, or received bad news and are not acting normal because they head isn't quite screwed on straight at the moment? It happens to all of us.
Or, on the flip side, what if they are just... well.. assholes?
Scott
p.s... I managed to be at the airport when 2 of the 3 sisters were leaving to go back to Washington, so I saw them off at their flight. They really are lovely people. We had a great chat, and are keeping in touch. Such is the way that lives get woven together....
I think we are all better off as a people if we try to assume the better of the two possible scenarios. If we're wrong, we're wrong. But if we're not, well, we may have showed some compassion and not added to their misfortune.
ReplyDeleteCeline, I agree TOTALLY. I'd rather give people reasonable doubt, until they prove beyond a shadow of that doubt that they are either taking advantage of normal generosity, or actual, true, assholes. At that point, I would just leave them behind in my dust... their mental or emotional limitations that do not allow them to function on a 'normal' level are their own problems.
ReplyDeleteBut I am always willing to lend a hand. It doesn't take a village, but sometimes our 'families' are a bit larger than we thought.