In graduate school we used to refer to one of my good
friends as “the onion,” not because she smelled badly, but because every time
you talked with her, you found out something new about her. Something interesting. Something unexpected. It was like peeling the layers back on an onion to reveal another part of her identity. “You’ve lived where?” “You’ve done what?” The more people I meet and get to know on
more than a superficial level, the more I realize that we’re all onions to some
extent.
We met a new onion today: our Stanley Steamer carpet
cleaner. Yes, that’s right. After an hour of sweating over cleaning our
horribly dirty carpets, Mr. Carpet Cleaner looked at my three kids (who were
probably staring at him!) and said, “Do you want me to do your caricatures?” Huh? “I do caricatures. Go get me a sharpie and some paper and I’ll
do yours. It’ll only take me 2-3 minutes
per child. Go ahead.” Um, ok.
So we did. And he did.
The kids were thrilled with their
portraits! During the six minutes it
took him to draw each of them we started talking. Turns out he is an artist who used to do
fashion illustrations for Ralph Lauren in New York. And a boxer.
Promoted by Don King. Not sure
which career came first. Or how or why a
man who was once a fashion illustrator and also once a boxer is cleaning my
carpets in Cary, NC. Well, it’s none of
my business, but it just goes to show that you can NEVER judge a book by its
cover. Your grocery clerk might be
trilingual... or a triplet... or a former triple jumper! All those soccer moms you see at carpool
might have their PhDs or be forensic scientists, detectives, who knows. So strike up a conversation with those around
you and they might somehow brighten your day (or at least disprove your assumptions about them)!
Signed,
The trilingual doctoral stay-at-home mom formerly known as
Kate Lovell. (See, even I’m an onion.)
