Homosexuality, Competence and Kindness

I saw Big Rick at the neighborhood bar today. He said he was a bit worried about my obsession with gay rights and political stuff in the blog this week. I said something about him being unsure of his masculinity. I mentioned my story about my father posted earlier today that is drawing some nice comments. We went on to talk about coffee beans. All of which leads me to this post. Funny how that happens.

On the way to the bar, I had stopped at the coffee store. Not a Starbucks or another chain, Atlanta Coffee Roasters in the Toco Hills shopping center.

For some years now, I’ve bought beans, ground them and brewed them in a coffee press. I usually only make coffee on the weekend (weekday mornings a cup from QuikTrip makes do). The trick to great coffee is freshly roasted beans. Beans roasted today are better than those roasted yesterday. That being the case, you want to buy fresh and then store them in the dark in an airtight container, some say in the freezer, some disagree.

So, I buy a half-pound at a time. I used to get coffee at a great shop in Marietta, Cool Beans; but, it’s a bit far away and I’ve been going to the shop at Toco Hills for a while now. I’ve never liked it, not because of the product, rather because of the cold workers. No smiles, no interest in helping you as you choose what you want to buy. Today that was different.

The young barista (I hate that word) smiled and asked if she could help me. (It probably didn’t hurt that she was a cute young Emory student if her shirt was telling the truth.) I asked what was recently roasted. She wasn’t sure and went into the back to get the roasting records. I settled on a Costa Rican bean that had been roasted the day before. She paused and then said “I’m not sure what’s on the counter is what was roasted yesterday, let me check in the back.” She came back out with a bag that was the newest roast and weighed my purchase. As I paid, I thanked her for going out of her way for me. In return, I got a beaming smile “I knew if you were smart enough to ask about what was the freshest, you wouldn’t want what wasn’t. I’m the same way. Did you notice I didn’t ask you if you wanted the beans ground (a mortal coffee sin)?”

We then talked about her experiencing Kona coffee roasted a half hour before being brewed before I went on my way.

That’s the competence part of the post.

To go back to my father, as you know from my last post, the UPS guy showed him kindness at the end of his life; but that wasn’t the only expression of it that he received.

He underwent radiation therapy. I went home to visit him towards the end.

In the middle of a conversation, he said, “You want to see my flowers?”

“Your flowers?”

He unbuttoned his shirt and showed me three black magic marker dots in the center of three multi-colored magic marker flowers on his chest.

“When I went in the first time I was really nervous. The girl (people my father’s age called any woman of a certain young age “girl” whether she was a waitress, a doctor or the radiation technician that he met that day) said don’t worry, ‘I’ve got to mess up your chest with this ugly marker for the machine and it won’t wash off too soon; so, if you don’t mind can I make the dots look better with a flower?’ I said OK, but I wasn’t sure. She did pretty good don’t you think?”

“Why are you looking that way? Don’t do that.”

Being the stoic people that we are, he gave me time to get that look, and the liquid, off of my face.

So, how do homosexuality, competence and a double dose of kindness come together?

We might not need my precious Bill of Rights and legalistic arguments if we all learned from the UPS guys, cute baristas and hospital girls of the world. Three people that went out of their way to do right. I’m thinking if you put them together in a room they’d get along nicely. I’m also thinking that there are many more like them out there in the world. They might teach a thing or two to the Reverend Wrights and Hagees of the world. The Bushes and Cheneys. The Jacksons and Sharptons. As cussed, as I call it, as we all are, I still often wonder why so much of our lives embrace conflict.