“If I can’t be the tablecloth, I sho’nuff ain’t gonna be no dishrag.” Not soon to be forgotten words from a wise, experienced, elderly, spicy, eccentric-possibly-bordering-on-paranoid-something lady who use to come up to the law office where I worked in my 20’s while finishing college. Her name was Ada Shields. She was a tiny black lady with sometimes-wild hair, and she had a thing of some sort with the building’s maintenance man, Jerry. Jerry was a roundish, elderly man with a completely different disposition from Ms. Shields. He had an easy way about himself, and he had a kind smile for me every morning, riding the elevator with me on many occasions, all the way up to the 8th Floor. He talked about this and that but never anything real personal. While I always considered him to be the sweetest and friendliest person in the building, it was he who told me one day, “There you go, as always, with a coke & a smile.” I love people who quote movies and songs in normal speech, because I do it too, and here he was quoting a commercial in the most endearing way. I have never forgotten this exchange, and I can see his face and hear his voice as clearly today as I did when it happened close to 20 years ago… his voice was scratchy but soft, rugged but gentle. I don’t think I ever knew Jerry's last name. I often wondered about his life… back when he was a young black man in this small, southern town. There’s a lot of history there… there’s a lot of history on that very street. I couldn’t help but wonder what he might wonder about me and who I was on the inside. Looking back, I hope he saw my genuine spirit the way I saw his.

Over my 2+ years working there in that old building with a bank on the bottom floor and law offices, accounting offices, and who knows what else in all the other offices of each of the 10 floors, I came to know the stories of many people, most definitely just in parts, and over time was able to put pieces together to form a more complete puzzle of their lives. Some of the pieces would never be available to me because my only interactions with them were in the confines of the law office during that particular season of their lives. But in the same way people will share and overshare with people at a hair appointment, people who are entrusting their very personal business in a law firm will often show you some of their other layers… or at least they did to me in that office. Ms. Shields talked to me like I was - if not her close friend - someone she felt familiar enough to talk to about her men troubles. She talked to me in the way that my Grandma Driver talked to me, when she told me way too many things that were really sort of inappropriate to tell your granddaughter. That being said, I also think Ms. Shields just might have been the type to tell her life story to anyone who happened to be listening… I preferred to think she felt an affection for me as I did her and all of her quirky self.

At first I took Ms. Shields' every word seriously. And then, after a time, well after I learned that the Jerry she spoke of was MY Jerry… my friend from the elevator and hallways of that old bank building, I ended up hearing enough of her stories to begin seeing them both through another set of lenses… still rooting for them individually, caring about them individually, seeing their layers, individually, of course, but wondering if they saw the sides of each other that I did from my outsiders view and wondering if one or both of them was as batshit crazy as some of her stories implied. There were days when all I heard were loving stories of him wooing her, going to her house to help her with a honey-do list, bringing her flowers, spending time with her. And then there were days when she told me about the ladder that she found against her house, and poison in her sugar container. I remember thinking there was no way that my Coke-and-a-smile-Jerry was climbing up a ladder to her house and he damn sure wasn’t putting poison in her sugar bowl. Jerry seemed like the type to tinker around a toolshed when he wasn’t at work, rocking back and forth a bit when he walked to balance his round frame in his elderly years. If a person can actually have a twinkle in their eyes, he had a twinkle in his eyes. Was he some sociopath who was able to sell himself so believably as a sweet old man? Or was he really just a sweet old man who was handling his lady friend with kid gloves in order to manage her crazy as best as he could? I never found out then, and I still don’t know now. And, sadly, when I googled Ms. Shields' name to see if I could find out anything about her, I saw her obituary pop up at the top of the Google results. She died 7 years ago at age 74… it’s amazing how when I met her in the late 90’s I thought she was already at least that age.

I have always had this thing for peoples’ stories… wanting to learn every little nugget about them. My favorite sort of book is a good non-fiction, a memoir, an autobiography, a historically accurate piece. And when I was a kid and Iistened to someone's stories, I believed everything they said, assuming that, even if there were inaccuracies, they were true to that person’s point of view. It took me telling an amazing story to my babysitter when I was 10 years old, to hear myself say words that I realized for the very first time didn’t make sense out loud, to suddenly - right there where I sat - realize that a story my Grandpa Driver had told me over and over could not possibly be true. While it was a face palm moment, slightly devastating that I had so believed something that wasn’t true, it was also a moment of realizing that my Grandpa had an amazing imagination and brilliant storytelling skills. I had visualized every word he’d spoken, as he told me about the reason his Chihuahua, "Tippy", was so mean and pissed off all the time. I knew from my Grandpa’s very detailed stories that Tippy was was once an Indian Warrior who was shot in the heart by an arrow, leaving the scar that I saw on his chest and asked my Grandpa about… that he nearly died but a Medicine Man healed him and brought him back to life… as a Chihuahua. Even to type this, it’s hard to imagine how naive someone has to be at any age to believe a story like that… but maybe it has less to do with that and more to do with the fact that I thought my Grandpa was larger than life and would never, ever tell me something that wasn’t true. Well, that and the fact that I was very gullible as a kid. It’s why I sat on the floorboard of his truck, trembling in fear, not daring to raise my head above the seat or speak a single word, because the Indians were searching for little blonde girls to scalp, and they were peeking out from the rocks along the highway with their bows and arrows… I couldn’t see them, but they were very skilled and very perceptive, and they would find me if I uttered a word. We have a lot of Native American blood in our family, and so why wouldn't I believe that my Grandpa had some inside information on this topic?

Looking back, I think it’s clear that I was probably chatting that old man’s ear off, and he just wanted a break, some peace and quiet. Sure, he chose a pretty racially insensitive way to shut me up, but, you have to admit, it had a stroke of brilliance to it. I was quiet, if only for the stretch of highway that had rocks alongside it. I have little kids now, and I know that feeling of sometimes just needing to not hear anything for a few minutes. I could say that my Grandpa’s stories are one of the reasons I have been slightly speculative about things I hear and prompted my permanent need for some sort of physical evidence, but, all in all, it probably just made me a more discerning listener, truth be told.

So as I listened to Ms. Shields' stories that got more and more unbelievable over time, I constantly wondered whether any of it was true. Unlike my Grandpa’s stories, which were clearly just stories to him, I do believe that SHE believed it was true. Nevertheless, I learned plenty from her. I saw an elderly woman with needs - emotional, physical, and, yes, sexual. In my early 20’s, I hadn’t reached a point of recognizing that there’s no age cut-off where sensualism and emotional and physical desires are concerned. One still feels the need to be loved, to love, to touch and to be touched, to feel intimate and to be intimate at any age. I think it was from Ms. Shields that I learned of this truth. I recall the alarm bells going off in my head as she talked about her "relations" (yes, those) with Jerry… I certainly didn’t want these visuals, but just like one of those dirty novels you find on your aunt’s bookshelves, with their ridiculous descriptives of body parts and forbidden sex, you can’t shut it off and you just continue to take in the words, through an uncomfortable curiosity, with your top lip pulled to one side waiting for it to be over but kind of wondering how it went. What I learned from Ms. Shields is that in the version of Jerry that she felt she knew, she understood what it was she wanted to feel. She wanted to feel important and loved, respected and desired, cherished and special. So when she told me the story about how Jerry went from helping her with a little bit of money here and there to eventually just leaving her bed, getting dressed, and leaving money on her bedside table, she knew it was unacceptable. She wasn’t about to feel like “no hooka”, “no prostitutin”. And she told me one day, while she was walking out the door waving her hands over her head, “If I can’t be the table cloth, I sho’nuff ain’t gonna be no dishrag.” And, ladies, if that doesn’t show you the wisdom of this wacky lady… I mean… we should all walk away from any situation where we feel like the dishrag. Wise, experienced, elderly, spicy, eccentric-possibly-bordering-on-paranoid-something Ada Shields. She still makes me smile.
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You know how you have those mornings where you are running on fumes from previous hectic days that are running together, a brain fog that has had its claws in you for months now despite various attempts to determine its source, you really struggled to drag yourself out of bed when the alarm went off, you made coffee you’re walking past again and again without having a chance to pour it, and you’re experiencing heart palpitations every time you hear your four kids fighting, complaining, and the repeatedly whining “Mooommmmmmmyyyyy”?  You’re rushing around trying to make sure so & so has their shirt they’re suppose to wear today, so & so has their library book that is overdue, getting all their lunches, snacks, and water bottles together, going through each of their binders, signing this and initialing that, making sure the kids all know that you washed a load of their underwear the night before once you realized there was not a single clean pair in the house, so they just need to go get them from the dryer, and you repeat that about twelve times until each of them has finally stopped whining long enough to hear you. You stop each of them mid-stride throughout the morning to hug, kiss, and tell them you love them to compensate for the lack of patience you’re displaying in general because they’re not listening to a single thing you say, and you wonder again for the trillionth time why you even bother talking at all… it sure would be less effort on our parts to just not speak. But all the while, you really just wish you could sit down with them and cuddle them and listen to them talk about something that's on their mind, but there's literally no time for this right now.

Tobey has had his medicine, Ms. Robert's claws have been removed from Max’s head again, you’ve styled everyone's hair, ensured dental/oral hygiene is in check, everyone is wearing shoes, you get them all in the car, and TODAY you also have 5 kittens in a large carrier beside you because they’re all going in for their first round of shots and check ups. You’re running late to get the kittens to the vet, and you realize that two of your kids have to be at school early for Happy Feet (running laps to earn rubber feet for their necklace), and you’re barely going to get them there on time. Now you’re rushing to the vet, you get there and realize you have to complete paperwork FOR FIVE INDIVIDUAL PETS, and meanwhile, your threenager is asking every two seconds why you didn’t bring his iPad. Paperwork is complete, the bag of poop you’ve been carrying around for fecal testing is finally in the right hands, you’re saying goodbye to kittens that you’ll pick up in 8 hours, and they tell you that you need FIVE SEPARATE CARRIERS for them when you pick them up… and, if you don’t have that many, don’t worry… they’ll sell you some. Thanks for that… dollar signs float in front of your eyes.

So now you’re driving back home, so anxious for that coffee you made and never poured, and right before you pull onto your street, you have a memory from earlier that morning of your husband saying something about the truck being low on gas... or maybe he said there was NO gas in it. You look down and realize that the indicator is resting against the bottom of the display… way south of the large E, and you better just keep driving straight to the 7/11. Please don’t let that light between here and there turn red, you plead to every god of every religion just to make sure you’re covering all your bases for the best possible outcome. Alas, you start to turn into the long driveway that takes you to a carwash, then to one of those ER places, and then around the corner there is the 7/11. But as you’re turning into that long driveway, the gas pedal stops working, the steering wheel starts to tighten, the truck stops pushing forward and just coasts. There’s a wide drive, and you pull to the right, and the truck stops. You have your threenager in the back seat asking when he’s going to school, can he go to the park, is the sitter going to be at the house when we get there, can he eat, can he do something fun… And you’re just thinking, ok, we are going for a nice little walk, it could have been worse, we made it off the road, it’s not raining, I have on a bra… ok, let’s do this. So you walk the rest of the way to the 7/11, you anticipate finding the gas can and seeing the $200,000 price tag and then find yourself slightly relieved that it’s only $15… for a plastic container that cost mere change to make and looks like three other ones you already own at home… and you start your walk of shame to the cash register, paying for your ticket back home, take it outside to fill it up, make your way back to where you parked the truck… or where it parked itself, if you’re honest. 

So there I was, standing against the truck reading directions on this thing so I could assemble it and get the gas into the tank of the truck, I thought to myself, “I still haven’t even had any coffee yet this morning”, as I picture it sitting in the french press on the counter. And then I’m happy that at least it’s Friday, because somehow it would seem worse if it was Monday. I’m mentally making the comparison between me standing here with this full container of gas and no idea how to get it from there to the inside of my gas tank and being on Survivor and finding a can of food but no can opener. I’m probably in the better situation, I think. I’m reading the shitty step by step instructions that are missing some critical steps, whenI hear a truck pull up behind me. I turn around and see a warm smile asking if he can help. Before I can answer, he is out of the truck and making his way to me. He smiles at Santi and says hello. He tells me I was close to having the dispenser installed correctly… just upside down… and he fixes it and takes care of the rest. I’m thanking him profusely, embarrassed that - at 43 years of age - I actually ran out of gas. I’m listening to Santi talk about this and that and trying really hard to concentrate on his jibber jabber and not that crack, I mean cup of coffee, that I really want to finally be pouring, I'm reminding myself to be grateful for… everything, and I look up to see the shirt this guy is wearing. And I smile. #chivalrylives