m&ms487

You can Do anything, I know it, and you know it, and the day you find out how special you really are, you're going to leave me behind.
So, last weekend was quite, not good. I went to work Saturday at one in the afternoon for a four and a half hour shift. I was given the curbside beeper (when old people or people with too many groceries need help out to their cars, the cashiers press a button and I help them to their car and put there groceries in the car and such) and I there was this one really weird lady who kept her change in old cigarette packs and was really old and sad looking that i had to help out to her car. I did, because, well, that's my job. When we got out to her car, it was really gross, it was filled with stuff, and was all ratty and smelled like cigarettes. Then it happened. She started talking to me about her life, about how her son was having surgery, her daughter was murdered, her husband died a long time ago, and she was all alone, and she was afraid to go in her house, and the guy across the street with an alcoholic wife would bring her mail to her and in her words, "he grabs me and hurts me" and by now I was feeling really bad, but i had to get back inside because, well, i was working. I told her this, and she said, "I understand, you don't want to listen to a pain the ass like me" and when i tried to assure her that wasn't it, she started talking about how she wasn't even strong enough to wash her own hair, so when she comes to the store to be around people, they all look at her like she's nasty and such. By this point, I had stood there about twenty minutes. The whole time I was trying to reassure her that everything was going to be okay. The last thing she said to me before i walked away was, "I just wish they would have buried me in the coffin with my husband when he died". This did it for me. I was walking backing into the store and I burst into tears. I had to go ask Carolyn if i could go on break and I went in the bathroom and cried for my whole fifteen minute break. I cried for me, I cried for her, I cried because life shouldn't have to be like that. People shouldn't have to be scared about other people, or to be home alone, or to be alive. Especially someone who has lived that long. When I first saw her I made the assumption that she was one of those really nasty old ladies, but when she was crying in that car telling me all this, I felt ashamed that I could ever think that way about another human being. She was just as much of a person as I, and deserved as much respect. Probably even more.

Some people are not clean, or have good manners, or look "pretty" or act with the best of manners, but that doesn't mean that they aren't PEOPLE. They deserve a chance to be with us. If there is a problem that you can't stand, then you have the right not to be around them, but prejudgements only enforce isolation. It keeps you from learning about who you are, who you could be. What if you were that old lady, how would you feel? You had nothing left. Nothing, everyone you had ever loved or lived for was gone, and you were all alone, and couldn't even wash your own hair.

Would you talk to you?

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