I can still hear my loud, echoing voice inside the car. Alone in my car, I was yelling, windows closed, at the woman in front of me who forgot she was turning left. There we were in the middle of the road together for that split second, and I lost my sh#t.
I wasn’t the only one. Others around us were extolling a similar response. Looking at their faces yelling at us, made me think of how my own face must have looked at that moment in time. Pinched, angry, red faces all encircling this unfortunate woman who made a tiny misstep.
I want to be better than that. I do. I remember reading a bumper sticker that said, “Be the person your dog thinks you are.” I suppose most people want that too, Michael Vick notwithstanding. For myself, I want to be the person that I want my kids to become.
Life, I have discovered, is like Google. If you search for happy people you will find them. If you search for people in pain, you will find them, too. I see unhappy people all the time. I’m not looking, however, I seem to be able to locate them with unnatural ease. At restaurants I see customers and servers getting “served” by each other. In the grocery store, I see people “checking” one another and not just at the register. And the Post Office? Well, there’s a reason it’s called “Going Postal.”
Why are people so mean to each other? Another saying, “Kill Them with Kindness,” may explain why we are all living longer.
At Starbucks, I see this hostile behavior between baristas and customers alike, and it drives me nuts. I get so excited at the thought of my green tea latte (venti, soy, unsweetened, no foam, extra Matcha) that I can barely contain my joy. I’m like a puppy who is so grateful for his 5 dollar biscuit! Yes, they get it wrong sometimes. How could they not?
There have been times when it’s downright awful. What should I do? Should I snicker and say, “You forgot the extra Matcha?” or condescendingly remark, “I asked for no foam!” No, that’s not what I do. Not just because it’s ugly…and it is ugly. I don’t do it because I don’t want to see my kids exhibiting that behavior.
Instead of overreacting, I try to imagine myself making hundreds of drinks a day for just above minimum wage at this time in my life. Then I add up how much I would be able to put up with and divide that by my worst morning. At my age, I would last 30 minutes, an hour at the outset. In my twenties when I actually did that type of work, I was more patient. Unfortunately, patience, which I also teach my kids, is pretty scarce in my brain these days.
Instead of any condescending or snarky remarks, I start my order using, “May I,” “Please,” and “Thank you” (the words we tell our children to use CONSTANTLY). I also ask the person taking my order how their day is going…with a smile. Ninety-nine percent of the time this is returned in-kind. For that other one percent, I imagine they are having their worst day, and I sheepishly move on to the pick-up window grateful that my day is not so bad and my biscuit will soon be in my paws.
If the Venti-soy-green-tea-latte with no sweetener, no foam and extra Matcha is made wrong, I lean in and with a smile ask them to please make it over because it doesn’t taste quite right. They almost always figure out “the something wrong” and it is remade perfectly. No one is harmed or maimed in the receiving of my oft daily tea.
We talk about how every day is a gift and we should be grateful for it. In the day-to-day repetitiveness of changing diapers and arguing with our spouses about which of us does more around the house, it’s easy to forget. If we could just ask ourselves: What would I want my child to do in this circumstance, we would live in a much better world with happier people. We all “talk the talk” when our kids are around, but can we “walk the walk” when they are not?
I am far from perfect…ask anyone who knows me. But, I want to strive to be that better person for my kids. And, for myself too. Unhappiness is inherently a miserable place to be. There are times when we can’t control our outward emotions, but there are obscenely more times when we can. So, I am challenging myself to be the person I want my kids to be.
From now on I will be teacher and student.