Idle Minutes

I decided to actually enter the Starbucks for my cup of coffee this time. Don’t know why. I’m a drive-thru type, rarely venturing indoors. This is a new Starbucks and in an area where the people are more my type. So I decided I’d see how the atmosphere suited me and if I felt comfortable sketching there.

Turns out it was fine and I’ll likely return and maybe become less of a drive-thru type. Also turns out there was a reason my self wanted me to go indoors today.

I saw an old friend from high school I hadn’t seen in thirty plus years.

I recognized him immediately, I’m pretty good at that for some reason. My face/name memory is good. Plus, this particular chap was probably the only person in the entire school for whom I had great respect.

I was on the wrestling team (wraslin’ as the coach referred to it). And Anthony was too. He was the State region AAA champ for his weight class actually. A reserved, mature gentleman would be the best description of him. He didn’t find pleasure in harassing and bullying the underclassmen. Instead, he placed his efforts in honing his skills and had a remarkable ability to concentrate on the sport.

For me though, the story was different. I was a gentleman but far from mature in my self belief. Thus I became a target for the shenanigans my upper classmen teammates conjured in their moments just prior to falling asleep at night. You know, that time when the mind seeks comforting thoughts so as to lull one into a gentle, pleasant sleep. And these clowns, I truly believe, obtained great pleasure from their ideas such that they would fall asleep each night with the delight that tomorrow would bring another day in which they could implement their boredom breaking antics on someone they viewed as passive. And passive I was.

A quick example is in order here. A young freshman football player was locked out of the gym one evening after practice. Not a big deal…except he was stripped of all his clothes first, shoved into a forty degree windy evening, and left wondering how he would get himself out of the predicament. After forty minutes or so of pleading, they let him in. Only God knows what they did then. Hopefully nothing.

I never suffered that level of harassment, but at practice I could always sense the wheels turning in the minds of the tormentors. They constantly had a mischievous grin on their faces when they would look at me. I wasn’t the only target mind you. There were a number of us to choose from. Like so many chickens in the yard, we knew the farmer had the hatchet in his overalls. It was just a matter of who would be eaten for dinner that night. It was a constant psychological nuisance for me and others.

Eventually, I quit the team. It’s not that I couldn’t take it. I simply didn’t need to. Over the Christmas break I finally asked myself why I was on this team. My answer was “Hell, I don’t really know. It’s not making me any friends. The students at large don’t even know the team exists. I’m exhausted… weaker now than when I started. And avoiding the crap is more trouble than it’s worth. Mostly bad, very little good, equals a waste of time. Time to quit and move on.”

Anthony though, was never part of the shenanigans. He was above that. Nobody bothered him and he never bothered anybody. He just won his matches like a machine. It was a given. He would win. And he would not strut about it. He actually tried to teach us newbies key things. He was the only one who did. He was much better at it than the coach. He was just a good person and a great athlete. I dug up the annual at home and in there he wrote “To a nice guy. Shouldn’t have quit wrestling. Wrestle next year. Anthony.”

Could be he was right. I’ll never know. The prevailing sentiment was to “never quit”. But I never bought into it. Some things are not worth continuing and can be quite costly if not stopped. Seemed to me it was wiser to constantly take stock of a situation, give it time to improve, legitimately attempt to improve it myself, and stop fooling myself if it was obviously not going to improve. That meant of course quitting and moving on. The noble Euripides once said, “The wisest follow their own direction.” And so I did.

It came as no surprise to me today that Anthony is still a good person. Owns his own business and does well at it. He treats his employees very well, like people. It was good to see him and to see him doing so well. We need people like that in society. They keep the wheels turning in the right direction. It speaks well of him that after thirty years people want to say hello rather than saying nothing and remembering things they had rather not.

So, what then is the lesson for me in this Starbucks story today?

We affect everyone we come in contact with, even thirty years hence. It is unavoidable. What then is the best way to be? What then is the best way to teach our children to be? What is the greatest value we can bring to the life we’ve been afforded?

Male or female, young or old, be kind, generous, understanding, resolved, fair, calm and thoughtful in your decisions. Be consistent. Know that you may be wrong sometimes and apologize. And if you are fortunate enough to have bestowed upon you a rare gift of talent, use it to emphasize these traits rather than become self absorbed and destroy them. In the end, that will gain you great respect. It is in fact, the only way to obtain respect and keep it.

If there is any endeavor in life that one should never quit, it is the struggle to acquire and keep these traits as a natural part of one’s self. Running into Anthony reminded me of that.