Like so many eternal optimists hiding from view these days, I find myself turning to my friends and family for keeping up with my daily intake of one small good news report. This helps me to combat the constant barrage of bad news. I was having problems noticing the smallest, silliest, turn of daily events that maintain my equilibrium. As both storyteller and story-taker, I find myself pestering people for their tales of going out into the world. I am known to beg people for the tiniest, snippet of silliness that they encountered going about their day.
“Anything funny happen today?” I ask if someone seems to have been in their own self-imposed bubble.
“No, nothing happened.” they say. Most people pass on this duty, but if I ask often enough in a totally different way, that same individual comes up with something that has made an otherwise, very, long day a little shorter. It may not have made them laugh initially, yet they did notice the reaction of the people surrounding them and can retell their memory of that experience. It usually elicits a chuckle or two.
I disregard the accompanying eye rolls, as well as the long, loud, sighs of exasperation. I am used to some of the most blatant non-verbal responses and I am an old-hand at eliciting some of the funniest stories…eventually. Recently a friend told me about something unexpected that happened during her shift at work as a cashier.
“There was one thing. I watched as this little dog came in the front door by himself, and walked right over to the end of the lane and waited.”
She went on with her story without adding too much detail. It wasn’t until she got to the “punchline,” as she described the moment that someone recognized him as a “regular customer” that it became a funny, “good-news” story. He was familiar to the cashiers because he made the daily morning rounds with his owner. His leash customarily stretched to the end of the counter where he always sat down and waited for someone to give him his daily treat. He did not bark, or make a fuss of some sort. He would not budge.
I liked thinking about this particular little doggy demonstrating patience, but that is putting my own special twist on it. He was well-trained. All they had to do was “give the dog a bone” to get him to lead them home. It didn’t take much time for someone to track down the owner and return him to the nearby apartment complex that was close-by. It was a funny, light-hearted story that simply needed a few retellings from different folks to magically make some of the stresses of the day disappear.
Everyone takes something different from their own experiences and is able to gain a totally different perspective if they step back from it a bit. After two years of people barking out orders to anyone they run into, I loved this story especially. My friend and her co-workers have faced the interminably long shifts at work in unpleasant and sometimes harrowing situations, but continue to fall back on their own training, both personally and at the work place. They made a habit of being nice to each other and the customers, which made them follow the number-one rule: the customer is always right. Even with all of the problems businesses are encountering, some make sure that they incentivize rewards for good behavior.
I still rely on those old sayings from nursery rhymes and songs that soothed me under stress. You know it too I bet. It never made much sense to chant “Knick-Knack Paddy-whack, Give the Dog a Bone!” Now it does.
By DOLLY VISCARDI – Special to the Herald Times
