I met a mechanic once. Now, I’ve met quite a few mechanics in my lifetime, but this one will always stick with me, mostly because I was never really sure whether or not he really was a mechanic. See, this man lied to me about almost everything. His name was Ralph, and he was homeless. I met him the summer before coming to college my freshman year. I was walking out of a Walgreens in downtown Palo Alto, and there he was sitting on a bench outside the store. I sat down on the bench and began to eat the candy bar I had just purchased. Ralph leaned over to me and asked, ever so politely, “You gonna finish all that?” I looked over in mild surprise. “I guess not,” I replied, as I handed him the bar. “Take as much as you want.” He proceeded to eat the entire bar while telling me some of the most ridiculous stories I have ever heard.
“I was in ‘Nam, you see. I flew planes; you know, the kind of planes that kill people. I would attach a kite to the end of my plane whenever I flew, just to show them Vietnamese that we Americans still knew how to have fun even in a time of war. None of that serious killing and crying stuff. That’s not for Americans, man.” Intrigued, I listened to Ralph talk for two hours. We talked about many subjects, ranging from testosterone poisoning he received as a child that gave him the ability to grow a beard (“I was the coolest kid in second grade…. [I] had a thick beard like Lincoln.”) to his three-story cat that he owned before it ran away and terrorized a small midwestern village (I kid you not: “Her name was Bulldozer. She was a he, mind you, but I like addressing my pets as though they’re female…”) to his wild inventions of robots and lasers (“I’m gonna take over the world one day, man.”)
Finally, I had to tell Ralph that I had to go; I was late for a doctor’s appointment.
I met up with Ralph every weekend that summer, sitting down and chatting with him for hours. One day he introduced his “wife,” a short red-haired woman who was missing the vast majority of her teeth. She looked at me and smiled. “I have a court date tomorrow,” she said with pride. “Got caught peeing on a cop car… I was bored of toilets, so I thought I’d try something new.” I figured that she, too, was lying, but in fact she produced her paperwork. I never saw her again.
The next week, Ralph told me about his three-room apartment and his beautiful girlfriend. He asked me if I wanted to see a picture of her. Before I could respond, he pulled out a folded-up, ripped-out magazine page of a Gap model. “Isn’t she gorgeous?” he asked me, prodding my side with his elbow. Not knowing what to say, I just nodded awkwardly and changed the subject. That was the day before I headed off to college. At the end of our conversation, he looked at me in the eyes and, in complete honesty, said “It’s funny, how I have to lie to myself and you about my life. I guess it’s just because I get ignored so often. It’s the only way to keep myself happy.”
Coming to Duke, I never realized the blaring reality of his statement until recently. Ralph lived a life where people ignored him all the time. There are people integral to Duke’s campus running smoothly, namely the bus drivers, housekeepers and food servers, who are treated the same way. They’re the people that clean up after a wild night of partying, take us to classes and give us our dinner. Yes, it’s true, these people aren’t homeless, but how often do we stop and talk to them, let alone thank them for making Duke what it is for us? Almost never.
And I will guarantee you this: if we were to take a precious few seconds out of our day to thank them for what they do, I bet that our campus would be a much happier place.
But that’s your choice.
Matt Dearborn is a Trinity sophomore.
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