Young people

I love them. They give me hope for the future.

Today a young man appeared at my door to repair my air conditioning unit.

The unit is not broken. There is nothing wrong with it.

Apparently lightening stuck the larger unit outside on the roof and for insurance purpose all the units must be replaced. So the guy goes around and replaces three or four each day.

It's a tight organized mess inside the closet. Water heater, heating unit and air conditioning unit all crammed in together.

I was instructed not to let anyone in posing as repairman. So I gave the guy a hard time but eventually permitted his entry. I was embarrassed because my whole apartment is a dump. And not just a regular dump. It's really bad. I already hired two housekeepers to help me get caught up but they both stood me up this last week. Dishes everywhere. The whole place looks like a poverty-place. Worse than a ghetto. Crap all over the place that I don't have the energy to organize.

I apologized saying I'm usually fastidious but I'm having a little bit of a problem with kidneys right now.

"Sorry to hear that. What does fastidious mean?"

     "It means fussy. Anal-retentive. If I see a dot on the carpet I'll bend over and pick it up. A place for everything and everything in its place."

Here's a thing that I notice about Americans particularly. We're not trained in give-and-take conversationally. Our culture does not support that.  Conversationally we are blusterous and we don't give an inch. Even as the discussion affects our opinions and reshapes our outlook. Within the conversation we don't budge.

Afterwards the new ideas sink in.

And later we expostulate as if all that is our own ideas.

Without ever acknowledging the source of fresh information.

I was watching Trump's Lexington rally when he knocked on the door. I told him I'm fascinated how Trump handles the crowd. Other speakers are invited, local luminaries, but none of them come close to Trump's disarming and provocative manner. I read elsewhere that Trump reminds people of their own father. People who grew up with military fathers say this (first page)

The repairman does not like Trump.

How common.

He doesn't like Trump for all the most common reasons. He's never encountered anyone who actually defends Trump. Meeting me is a unique experience for him. He also noticed a few framed Egyptian style paintings. He asked about my interest. I told him that I painted those and that I'm learning hieroglyphics. He has a strong interest himself. He asked what I thought about some whacked theory about finding Egyptian artifacts in the Grand Canyon. I explained Egyptian Nile-centric culture and un-sea-worthy Egyptian ships. Phoenicians would be more likely but not that far into the American interior.

Although he didn't budge one inch within our conversation I'm certain by his friendly exit his attitude is changed. About Egypt and about Trump (and about teosinte, maize, and how British use the word "corn" for all grains including wheat. So old paintings of a plant that looks like modern corn cannot be corn as we know it.")  He has a lot of strange ideas that come from unhelpful sources. It's possible to work a wedge in with alternate ideas, and challenge his sources of information and replace bogus ideas with solid ideas, and that's possible because he is young.

I don't get nearly as far with older folks.

There was a lot of back and forth out of my apartment to his makeshift shop. I was on my way out. He delayed me considerably to get his job done. So after all that he was grateful to me for being so patient with him.

We walked out together.

I walked over to Zeps, a hipster sandwich place nearby. While in there I saw five separate young people each individually pop in with a large insulated case with a shoulder strap. Each one of them different. They weren't just picking up meals, they were picking up meals to deliver. Far more of those than there were people eating their meal inside the shop.

"I'll have your Breckenridge."

     "Okay."

"It's the closest thing to French dip."

     "French dip?"

Omg, that's adorable. He's a twenty-something and he works in sandwich shop and he's too young to know what a French dip is.

"Yea. You know, French have a million recipes for stale bread. French toast, bread pudding, croutons, stuffing, soup thickener, sausages, and so on. But we make this sandwich with fresh bread. And there goes the whole raison d'être.

"Raison d'être?"

     "There goes its whole reason for being. The bread isn't stale so it doesn't need broth to dip it into."

"Oh."

They don't know a word so they feel comfortable asking its meaning. They don't fake it as older people do. I love that about them. They're open. They're willing to learn. They're beautiful to me in this way.

Even Nurse Ratched at the kidney specialist was so insistent that I check into emergency for a potassium shot because that's what the doctor told her. She was very hard-assed about me accepting this. Knowing that same thing can be corrected by food apparently was a new concept for her. Her entire tone with me now is different. She switched to sweetness and light. "Is it okay with you to accept a prescription for potassium and another lab check one week after that?"

"Sure."