Nonfiction |
Angels and Cranky Old Ladies
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There are two natural phenomena that I know something about: angels and cranky old ladies. I am competent to discuss angels because, based on my own criteria, I have had several encounters with angels. The first time was on a beach in Mazatlán in 1968. I was 22. My most recent encounter occurred last December in the Men’s Department at Macy’s in Stonestown. I am now 72.
My definition of an angel is the perfect stranger who comes into your life for a very brief period of time. During that time a transformation occurs. The angel may return something that was lost. The angel may tell you something you didn’t know you needed to know. Or, the angel may point you in a direction you didn’t know you needed to go. Every encounter has always included the same five steps in the following order. The first step always involves me being in a snit about something: anxious, upset. In Mazatlán, walking the beach, I felt like the worst human being on the planet. The friend I had come to Mexico with got pretty sick two days into the trip. She called her family and took a bus back to California. I did not want to go back with her, so I didn’t, but I felt like a heel about it. The second step is the brief encounter with the perfect stranger. As I was walking the beach, another young woman came up to me. She said she was Naomi from Brooklyn, and she had just come down from the small mountain village of Hualtla near Oaxaca. While there, she had a significant spiritual experience. She said, “You need to go to Hualtla. You too will have a significant spiritual experience.” Then she walked down the beach and I never saw her again. The third step is the transformation. What changes as a result of meeting an angel? On the beach in Mazatlán, I now had a reason to stay in Mexico. I had a goal. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know where Oaxaca was or how to get there, but I knew I wanted to go. And I knew I could do it. The fourth step I call the “Wow, what just happened here” moment. I knew I had gone from being very miserable to very motivated in under five minutes. The fifth step is always and inevitably the question, “Who was that person? Who was she?” Did she have a life before she entered mine, changed everything, then walked out of it again? Seventy to eighty percent of the time I am willing to believe that the angels I’ve met are actually human beings. Since I believe that we all carry a spark of the divine within us, I can see how it might be possible that the spark can sometimes glow very brightly. At that time any one of us might say or do something that is transformative in someone else’s life. The rest of the time I think, No! When Naomi walked down the beach and disappeared from my sight, she disappeared off the planet. She went to some celestial place where angels hang out to wait for their next assignment. |
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I also know a lot about cranky old ladies, being one myself. I know that the real question here is, “What makes a middle class, middle–aged white woman cranky in the first place?” I have everything I need for basic survival and a lot more. What is the one thing I am not getting? Younger! At 72 I recognize that my time on the planet is limited. I’m okay with that for the most part, but I am not okay with wasting one precious minute of the time I have left. Consequently, I get irritated when dealing with people who don’t know how to do their job or aren’t efficient. Basically people who don’t do things the way I think they should be done. The one thing I hate the most: waiting in line. Waiting for anything, actually.
Last December I was finishing up my holiday shopping in the Men’s Department at Macy’s in Stonestown. I found everything I was looking for and went to the cashier’s kiosk. I was pleased to see that there were three clerks in the kiosk, but then I saw the line of customers and I started to get irritated. I knew it was the Holiday Season and I should expect lines, but This is my life! I thought. I got in line and I began my most important task as a crank, which is to do a performance assessment on those three clerks. Two of the clerks were behind a shared counter facing in one direction. The third clerk was directly behind them but facing in the opposite direction. A single line of people waiting to pay was off to the left of the first two clerks, facing them from the side. The only clerk I had clear sight of was the third one. I saw that she had a large pile of clothes in front of her and a little old lady customer. Immediately, I thought, Why are you getting so much stuff? You’re going to keep this clerk busy for the next ten minutes; she won’t have time to help me. And you better be shopping and not returning clothes while the rest of us are trying to finish our holiday shopping. That would be a crummy thing to do. So I turned my attention to the other two clerks. All I could see was a side view of the clerk closest to the front of the line. I could not see the second clerk at all. But I knew; I had no doubt, based on what I saw as I approached the kiosk and what I was seeing then (which was nothing) that one of those clerks was less efficient than the other, and that knowledge just fried my behind. Why can’t Macy’s hire competent clerks over the Holidays? Finally, the man in front of me became the next person in line, and of course, he got the clerk that I thought was the more efficient. I felt my irritation increase when 5 seconds later I got the less efficient one. I walked over to her. The man who had been in front of me was now on my right side, facing his clerk. Now on his left side, I slammed my clothes on the counter in front of my clerk. She said, “How are you today?” And I sneered at her, “FINE!” Every part of my mind knew that I was ready to say something really snarky and mean-spirited if she did or said anything that irritated me further. I didn’t know what that could be. But I knew I was ready and I knew I would hate myself for saying whatever it might be. Right at that moment the man to my right started talking in a voice that was loud enough to be heard by everyone in the immediate area; he was very adamant and he was very animated. “Today is a great day! I feel really good today. I feel so good today. Today is a great day! This is really a great day!” |
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I thought, For crying out loud! Now what?
He continued, repeating himself, “Today is a great day! I feel really good today. I feel so good today. I’m having a great day!” Then he addressed his clerk, “And, how are you today, Ma’am. I hope you’re having a great day. I feel really good today, and I hope you’re having a good day too.” I thought, Oh, my god, is he mocking me? At that exact moment I realized that I had a choice. I could keep my cranky attitude. I could think, What’s his problem? Or, and this is what happened: without conscious thought, I let everything go. I got over myself. My breathing and heart rate returned to normal. The muscles in my chest and arms relaxed. The voice in my head that never shuts up went silent. For two or three seconds I was peace itself. I came out of it but didn’t say anything. I was too full, in equal parts, of shame and gratitude. I had come so close to making an ass of myself in Macy’s, but then was pulled back from the brink. When the clerk was finished, I said quietly, “Thank you very much for your help.” I left the store immediately, head down. I got to my car, threw the clothes in the trunk, and thought: OMG! Baby, you just met another angel. All the signs were there. One, I was in a snit about having to wait in line. Two, the very brief encounter with the perfect stranger. A transformation: the moment I understood that I am responsible for every word that comes out of my mouth and there’s no pass for “older adults”. More than that, I realized that I want to be like that man in Macy’s. I want to be a person who says, “I’m fine thanks, and I hope you are having a good day too.” And, I knew that I had been taught a lesson. It’s the same lesson we teach children in pre-school: Be nice. Me! Be nice! That was my “Wow! What just happened here” moment. The last step is always and inevitably the question: “Who was that guy? Who was he?” Perhaps he was an ordinary man in whom the spirit of the divine burst out triggered by my bad behavior. When he left Macy’s he went back to being an ordinary person. Although it did occur to me that he might be a Baptist Minister, I prefer to think that when he walked out of Macy’s, he dissolved into the atmosphere and went back to hang out with the other angels. Upon seeing him, I’m sure his supervising angel said, “Good job with that cranky old lady down there. Interesting technique you used. Go have a beer before I send you down there again.” |
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About Pat Skala
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