Across the street from DC’s most infamous theater and not a stone’s throw away from the bed where our sixteenth President breathed
his last, stands a rusty brick building that houses a cadre of shops, one of
which is named Honest Abe’s Souvenirs.
Elbowing each other for room on the sidewalk in front of the
store are a company of souvenirs stands and street vendors waiting for
customers with salivating mouths like a pride of hungry lions. To their great fortune, it is Spring in DC,
the season of the fat and happy lion where there is no need to run and
chase—only to wait.
To the background
sonnet of a high gear city, perpetually turning, 96 eighth graders with wallets
and purses on fire, flood across the street, a tsunami of chattering mouths and
cellphones. They are a herd of gazelle
crossing the African plain in search of water, and the vendor-lions are holding
up signs that read, “Here is the pool, come drink!”
And drink they do!
From cheap knockoff sunglasses and over-priced ice cream
sandwiches, to flat-billed hats and neon hoodies, they gorge themselves,
determined to fit in, determined to take a piece of DC with them. Most spend every dime they have and I watch,
with a strange anxiety because I want to scold them.
“Those aren’t real Oakley’s!”
I want to yell. “Save your money! You’ll
never wear that stupid hat again!”
But before I can, the kid inside me speaks up.
“You were just like them,” he says, “remember?”
I was…I am.
Sixteen years ago, on my 8th grade DC trip, I
bought a camouflaged bucket hat, just like all my friends. And just like all my friends, I wore it for
two days before it was lost in the sands of time.
So, I take my younger self’s advice and decide to let them
learn that lesson themselves while I finish the last bit of a frappachino, content
to stand guard, a chaperone sentinel should any need of one arise.
But fate can be a conniving trickster ready to serve up a
warm slice of humble pie.
And she isn’t going to let me off that easy.
~
I have two young daughters and before I left I promised to
bring them something back from my trip.
I’d made that promise with a memento or tiny trinket in mind, knowing
that they would be happy with simple toys. However, as I stand watch in the shade of a green
canvas awning, something catches my attention.
Under Honest Abe’s watchful eye and sandwiched between two
drink and ice cream vendors, stands a small t-shirt booth. Hanging, somewhat tenuously, at one end of
the booth is the image of one of my daughter’s childhood heroes printed on a
t-shirt, a literal block head named Steve.
Steve is the star of a Swedish designed video game called Minecraft, which over the past few
years, has soared in popularity, swallowing more and more of children’s time
and parent’s money.
My daughter was not immune.
As soon as I see the
t-shirt, the flame of my promise reignites inside me because I know one simple
truth, my daughter will adore it.
So, I cautiously make my way through the herd of gazelle to
the pool. But before I kneel to take a
drink, I make a vow to myself that if I am to drink the water and dine with the
lions, it will be on my terms.
Black sharpie scribbled across a piece of cardboard indicates
that all t-shirts, no matter the size, are ten bucks.
That is the cost of my daughter’s adoration and happiness.
That is two dollars more than I am willing to spend.
Manning the booth is a short brown skinned woman with gray
streaked black hair and a worn face, like aged leather. She smiles as I approach, a warm, affable
smile.
But I see right through it.
I am not my eighth grade self.
I am older, wiser.
I smile back. “How
much are the shirts?” I ask.
Though the cardboard sign is perched just an arm’s reach
away from her, she answers pleasantly in a heavy Hispanic accent, as if I’d
just made an honest mistake, “Ten dollars.”
I cross my arms, deliberately deliberating.
After a moment, she asks, “Which one do you like?”
I nod toward the Minecraft
shirt. “That blue one there.”
“Do you have a son?”
“Two daughters.”
Her face lights up. “Very good,” she says. “Very good.”
I take a breath.
Small talk is over. It’s time to
get down to business. Time for me to
rise up to the occasion. Time to show
how far I’ve come.
“I will give you six dollars for it,” I say.
She smiles. “Ten
dollars.”
“Seven,” I say.
Still smiling, she shakes her head. “No, sorry, ten dollars.”
I take another breath and exhale slowly. It is time for another approach.
“What is the size of that shirt?” I ask even though I can
plainly see the size.
“Child’s medium,” she replies.
I sigh, trying my best to look disappointed. “That is too big for my daughter.” I pause for effect. “Tell you what, I’ll give you eight dollars.”
A brief silence ensues.
A breeze begins to blow and I feel as if it is just her and I standing
under the high-noon sun with our hands at our holsters.
Though I don’t bring the fact to life with words, the woman
must see in the narrowing of my eyes that my next offer will be a polite
pleasantry as I depart from her life forever without buying the shirt.
Still, her smile is unrelenting.
"Ten dollars," she says, as genial as the first
time.
We’ve reached an impasse that even the author of the great
compromise, Henry Clay, couldn't break.
So, with my threshold attained, I remain true the promise of my
narrowing eyes, and removed my hand from my holster while I offering a simple
salutation before departing.
There is a slight disappointment over my failure to procure
the Minecraft shirt as I walk away,
but it easily eclipsed by a wave of self-righteousness that surges through
me. I may have lost the battle, but I
won the war.
As I stand on the mountain of triumph, somewhere, the kid in
me is shaking his head.
~
Ding! Ding! Ding!
You hear that?
That is the sound of the oven timer.
My humble pie is ready...
Twenty minutes later, after the herd of gazelle have
meandered over to a street musician hammering out a beat on a makeshift drum
set of old trash cans and buckets of paint, I’m pondering the irony of a store
using Honest Abe's likeness to hock cheaply made souvenirs at outrageous prices
when I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder.
I turn to see the Hispanic woman staring up at me.
But she isn’t smiling.
"Sir," she says, with a small quiver of her lip.
"Yes?" I say, thoroughly perplexed by her
presence.
The woman reaches behind her back and produces a thin plastic
bag. "For your child."
I stare blankly at her as letters slowly form into words in
my mouth. But before I can even say
anything, she drops the bag into my hands. I glance down. Inside is the Minecraft shirt. I look up and furrow my brow. I still am not sure what is happening. "For free?" I ask.
She nods. "For
free."
"Are you sure?" I reach for my wallet. "I have ten dollars right here."
She shakes her head.
"No money. Free."
I flash a twenty dollar bill. She only shakes her head more adamantly until
I slip the bill back into my wallet.
"Thanks," I say.
With my offer of gratitude, her smile returns and she bows a
bit before retreating to her booth.
In the wake of the transaction, I am speechless for a long
time. My inflated sense of
self-importance that had accompanied my victory has vanished and a mixture of
guilt and shame flood in to fill the void.
The woman's act of kindness pulls me down from my mountain
of triumph and as I fall, I realize that the mountain wasn't made of rock but
sand all along.
~
Thinking back, I don’t know her reasons for giving me the
shirt, perhaps it was an offering of gratitude for shepherding the gazelle to
the pool or maybe she felt guilty herself for fighting for two extra
dollars. Just maybe, she wanted to do
something nice. The reasons are between
her and the Almighty and for the purpose of this little ditty, they don’t really
matter.
Because of her, I’ve realized that there are times in all
our lives where we take a moral stand more out of pride than anything
else. (I mean, what is a ten dollar
shirt, when I had just spent nearly as much on a Frappuccino at Starbucks?) We dig in our heels and refuse to budge. Sometimes we lose and walk away flustered and
sometimes we win and leave swelled up with vindication. Either way we cling to our mountain until
someone comes along and forces us to let go.
They’re not always waves that crash against the shore and
wash away our mountain, sometimes
they are small people with small acts and are more like a gentle spring rain,
one that comes in unexpected and softens up the sand just enough for us to lose
our footing.
I’ve thought of that small person and her small act
repeatedly and if or when I go back to DC, I hope to run into her again and
tell her thank you.
And if I ever come face to face with the trickster that is
Fate, I will tell her that even though I don’t like the taste of her humble
pie, I’m glad I had a piece.
