[. . .]“I suffer from an illness which makes my behavior seem bizarre. I have to register a car, but I can’t stand in line, and I can’t touch papers that anyone else has handled.”
The clerk’s voice said, “Just a minute, please.”
Then another voice came on the line. He explained again. He heard that second voice say, “Just a minute, please.” He thought this wasn’t going to work, but the third voice offered hope. “Come on down, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Alan stood a little distance from the crowds at the counter, in his usual defensive mode—forearms pressed together, both hands in plastic bags, one hand cupping his chin. From the other, also near his chin, dangled a plastic bag full of documents. “I was a sight,” he remembered. He waited there for a few minutes, feeling desperate and helpless, and then a clerk appeared from behind the counter. She looked at him and didn’t even seem surprised. She led him to an empt office, took the bag of documents, and returned ten minutes later with all the paperwork completed. She even escorted him out to the parking lot, opening all the doors for him.
That Christmas Alan sent a four-pound box of Godiva chocolates to the registry, along with a thank-you note. He got back a letter signed by the entire staff. Were there tearstains on it? The letter said how very rare it was for them to get a thank-you note, let alone a present. On Valentine’s Day, Alan sent the registry two dozen long-stemmed roses, and on Thanksgiving a large fruit basket. He’d sent those presents every year since. He also sent chocolates to his bank. The head teller would fetch a stack of crisp, new money from the vault for Alan. Alan sent his gifts to his auto dealership, too. He couldn’t let anyone else inside his car. The mechanics allowed him to drive it into the service shed. No one there openly made fun of him, though it was a strange sight, Alan’s car aloft on the lift with Alan sitting in the driver’s seat.
Tracy Kidder, Home Town (New York: Random House, 1999). Pages 92 to 93.
We should all cultivate, as a great virtue, not making people feel embarrassed for any behavior that does no harm to anyone else. No matter how odd.
Certainly, of course, this means never deriding someone for the clothes they wear, as on page 120: “Benjamin had enough troubles. He still insisted on dressing for school in his West Coast surfer shorts and Vans. Some of his new classmates called him the California kid, sarcastically. The other day she’d had to go to the school because he’d gotten in a fight, and he wasn’t a fighter. [. . .]”
People should not ill-treat or harass another person for any difference, no matter how voluntarily, that harms no one else.
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