Please
An act of kindness was visited upon me a very long time ago, and I wish to memorialize it.
In the mid-1980s, we were flat broke. I no longer remember whether it was before or after my husband had walked out on us. I decided my boys and I would hit the streets for an afternoon of adventure. We would ride Bart to San Francisco.
We found ourselves in Union Square. I was looking like a fright, with my hair tied up, and wearing flip flops. My youngest was in a disintegrating umbrella stroller. A year or two previously, I had worked in San Francisco myself, but my fortunes had changed for a variety of reasons. I surely had not dressed for any occasion. In those days, had there been any occasion, I would have been unable to dress for it. Rather, I looked like a poor housewife airing out with her kids, which I now was. We had seen our midnight strike when a car became a shopping cart and glass slippers became house shoes worn as street shoes.
My eldest, who was five or six, spotted the glass elevators. Could we ride one?
Oh, my.
Would we be shooed from such a prestigious hotel? I’m sure I hesitated.
But I was a twentysomething mom who had not yet been knocked all the way to the ground, and I decided we would try.
We entered the lobby. My children were at the age where ‘we always ask permission,’ and I showed my son the concierge. The concierge at this expensive hotel regarded us with alertness. Embarrassed, I started to blubber that my children had never ridden an elevator – I had meant to say “glass” elevator. Somehow, I got my bumbling request out.
With a graciousness I would not receive again for a very long time, the concierge indicated the glass elevator with a sweep of his hand and the only word I would ever hear him speak.
“Please.”
In the mid-1980s, we were flat broke. I no longer remember whether it was before or after my husband had walked out on us. I decided my boys and I would hit the streets for an afternoon of adventure. We would ride Bart to San Francisco.
We found ourselves in Union Square. I was looking like a fright, with my hair tied up, and wearing flip flops. My youngest was in a disintegrating umbrella stroller. A year or two previously, I had worked in San Francisco myself, but my fortunes had changed for a variety of reasons. I surely had not dressed for any occasion. In those days, had there been any occasion, I would have been unable to dress for it. Rather, I looked like a poor housewife airing out with her kids, which I now was. We had seen our midnight strike when a car became a shopping cart and glass slippers became house shoes worn as street shoes.
My eldest, who was five or six, spotted the glass elevators. Could we ride one?
Oh, my.
Would we be shooed from such a prestigious hotel? I’m sure I hesitated.
But I was a twentysomething mom who had not yet been knocked all the way to the ground, and I decided we would try.
We entered the lobby. My children were at the age where ‘we always ask permission,’ and I showed my son the concierge. The concierge at this expensive hotel regarded us with alertness. Embarrassed, I started to blubber that my children had never ridden an elevator – I had meant to say “glass” elevator. Somehow, I got my bumbling request out.
With a graciousness I would not receive again for a very long time, the concierge indicated the glass elevator with a sweep of his hand and the only word I would ever hear him speak.
“Please.”
posted by Exxuendo at 9:05 PM
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