February 11, 2007
Friday was very much one of those days. Running around like the proverbial chicken, I was supposed to be gone from the apartment all day from the time I left for a doctor's appointment at 8:50 until about 6:30, when I returned from meeting/tutoring a new Somali family. So of course I came home twice; once to get my phone and once to get my tutoring 'kit.' David is referring to it as the most poorly named plan of the semester thus far. And believe me, there have been several poorly named plans with which Friday had to compete. But it was not without its highlights.
Waiting for the bus to go downtown to do an interview (notice that is to 'do,' not to 'have.' I'm conducting 24 interviews for my thesis for public health, which is my excuse for not posting for so long. You'll have to ask David for his own excuse.), I watched two bags jettisoned from a bus by an older woman who had four bags altogether, plus a purse and a cane. She was clearly having one of those days, too, so after waffling between wanting to help and pretending to ignore her in the true American spirit of feeling that she might be embarrassed to have someone notice her awkward wrangling of bags, I went over and asked if she was going somewhere nearby I could help carry her bags to. She was, so we set off, chatting about what she was going to be doing for the weekend that necessitated so many bags. Basketball games in Cleveland, was the answer, although I'm still not sure if it's a professional team or college. Has anyone heard of the Cavaliers?
Completing her errand, we trudged back up towards the bus stop ritually complaining about the weather (it's been -20 degrees, so we had plenty to complain about), and then she tried to tip me for helping her. We argued, oh-so-politely about it, my point being that I had offered to help because I wanted to do so, not because I expected any compensation, and her point being that I was a student and so was always in need of extra money. I was truly torn over how to handle the situation because I couldn't figure out if it was ruder to accept the money, or to insist on not taking it. Since we were blocking pedestrian traffic for a good minute, I eventually took the offered bill and then found a way to sneak it into a zippered outside pocket of one the bags I was carrying.
We left each other downtown, with mutual assurances of good will and I went off to conduct my eighth interview before having to go home twice, interrupting David watching a docu-drama about LBJ and the Vietnam war. All things considered, it was actually a pretty pleasant one of those days.
