Part 1
I realize now how much I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. Today was a quarterly sale at the Friends of the Library Book Bay, all books $1.00. In short, an event not to be missed for a book addict like me. The City of San Francisco, in its incandescent wisdom, just installed a toll booth at the entrance to the parking lot which houses the Book Bay and several other attractions. The first hour is free, then you pay $1.00 for each additional hour.
There wasn't that much at the sale and I got out in exactly one hour. As I stopped at the checkpoint, their exterior clock advanced a minute before the guy could open the gate, so he charged me. I pointed out that the clock had moved after I got there, so I had gotten in under the wire.
He snarled, "It's your responsibility to check the time."
Excuse me. Are you talking to ME? I don't need Parking Nazis chiding me about Responsibility. " Look at my watch," I said. He demanded his dollar again.
I grasped the pointlessness of arguing with a person with no soul so I fished in my wallet for the most crumpled, grimy bill I had and gave it to him. I wish I'd peed on it first. I hope my exhaust fumes choked him. The troglodyte pig.
Things like this did not happen when I was young. I know, it's only a dollar, but the Principle! I absolutely know that if I were young, he would have opened the gate. He would not have asked me for money. I would have rewarded him with a smile, and we would have connected as fellow humans for a millisecond. Where is the harm in that?
It isn't that I ever earned such preferential treatment. In fact, I think I'm generally nicer now than I was when I was young. But having grown accustomed to a greater measure of kindness from strangers, it is particularly hard to accept less with any kind of grace. It isn't fair that I should have been treated better then for doing less, and that even such insignificant aspects of life are not based on any kind of merit. I didn't realize this when I was young and really believed that people were kind to me because I deserved it.
Where do we go from here? I can only get older. Can I then expect things to only get rattier? All I ask is the same measure of decent treatment I once took for granted. And for people to keep in mind that every older woman is a young one traveling incognito.
