Hey, you need a cab, man?This past Saturday, I joined my bestie,
@Steph2.0 who invited me to share a bit of her world as a volunteer for a local aviation expo. It was the last day of the show yet promised to be the busiest, primarily due to the absolutely terrible weather the day before. This day was cool and sunny - absolutely perfect!
Having never done anything remotely like this before in my life, I had no idea what to expect or indeed, what job I might end up doing. Not very long ago, the prospect of doing something like that would have been unthinkable. The sheer anxiety this would have induced with the very thought of deliberately going out and interacting with random people...well, it would have been off the chart! Thinking about it further, I suppose it would have been because of all the old fears that I'd say something not quite right and then I'd withdraw from further interaction which would just make things progressively worse until it came to an end one way or another. Most likely it would end by me walking away.
This was different. Thankfully Stephanie gave me a guided tour of the place in the morning while everyone was setting up, which helped put me a little more at ease. I told her that I was a little bit nervous, much in the same way as at the wedding we went to recently. I said, "I'm nervous but much like the wedding, I'll finally get tired of being nervous and just jump right in and handle business."
After our quick tour, we came back to the volunteer tent where I was pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered. Well, not really. The nice lady inside gave me a hat, a T-shirt, a name tag, and a button and said that help was needed with parking cars. I got on my volunteer outfit and headed out to meet with the Field Commander of the car park. On the ride out there in his golf cart, he asked me if I'd be okay with driving one of the golf carts, shuttling people back and forth from the show to the parking area or if I wanted to park cars.
I said, "I can drive a shuttle."
Thinking to myself however, "Have I ever even
driven a golf cart before? Well, I've driven a go kart before and this just has an 'LF' stuck on the end. It shouldn't be that complicated."
Before long, I was sitting at the wheel of a 6-passenger gas-powered golf cart and watching for incoming guests.
Hi! I'll be your driver for today.
I got off to a bit of a slow start but before long, I was all over that parking lot, giving out smiles and getting them in return. Unexpectedly, I found that I was really enjoying myself that day, just out practicing both my people skills and using my voice at an elevated volume in most cases.
Only once did I get misgendered by someone. He was a friendly, older gentleman who had said to the people he was talking to, "Hey, I've got to go -
he's going to give me a ride". Being in good spirits, this pretty much slid right off my back and I started chatting with the guy when we got moving. From his demeanor, I could tell that he knew he had accidentally called this lady in the golf cart, "he", and was a bit embarrassed by it. The rest of the day, I was addressed properly by everyone I met - I even got called "honey" by one rather energetic fellow.
One of the other drivers was this guy who I would swear was a cab driver in real life. Later in the day as we spent more time at the entrance, we had a bit more time sitting idle. As groups would emerge from the event area, we offered them rides back to their cars. I thought it a funny contrast between the two of us in the way we addressed people coming through the exit. Usually I would ask something like, "Hi, folks! Can I offer you a ride back to your car?" whereas he was saying, "Hey, wanna ride?" I had to suppress a giggle sometimes when I pictured him standing there next to a taxi in the same pose, shoulders slumped, hands in his pockets saying, "Hey, you need a cab, man?"
The brain does some funny things to amuse itself sometimes.
It wasn't until the end of the day that I realized just what a milestone this day had been for me. I'd spent the day talking to people, helping them out in whatever way I could. The enormity of what I'd just done finally hit me. Everything had felt perfectly natural that day with absolutely no awkwardness at all. This is what normal life is like.
My eyes started to tear up at this revelation.
This is what the last four decades of my life should have been like.
This is what the next four
will be like.
