I Love People

The week before Christmas, I needed to trade my Utah license for a Texas license, so Luke and I made a trip to the DPS (We also stopped at the social security office to replace my lost social security card just beforehand, and this was after a failed attempt to do both the week before, but this story is about the DPS).

The DPS was crowded and Luke and I were looking at a good hour and a half long wait. I mentally prepared myself to entertain my 18-month-old for that long in a room full of impatient people. But I quickly discovered I wouldn't have to.

Luke and I found two empty seats at the end of a row. There weren't a lot of empty seats around, but there happened to be two more empty seats directly in front of us. Luke decided to play musical chairs between the 4 seats a couple of times, insisting that I join him. Every time he sat in a chair, he authoritatively pointed at the seat next to him, directing me to sit there.

After a couple of minutes, a woman sat in the seat on the end of the row in front of us, but that didn't deter Luke. While I stayed in my seat, Luke jumped down and walked confidently to the row in front of me and climbed into the single open seat. He just sat there facing forward with the newcomer middle-aged blonde woman on his right and an African-American man in his late 50's on his left. Both the man and the woman turned to Luke to say hello. For several minutes, Luke stayed in the chair chatting it up with his new friends.

After a while, the man's friend came over and sat on the edge of Luke's seat to have a quick conversation with with his buddy. Luke was standing against the back of the chair and the blonde woman put her hand behind his back and said, "Careful. Don't fall." Luke took that as an invitation and sat himself right down on her lap. She seemed surprised, but she helped him get comfortable and pulled out her tablet. I apologized for Luke's presumptuousness and offered to take him back. However, instead of handing him back to me, she assured there was no need to apologize and spent 20 minutes playing Angry Birds with him on her tablet, turning back 2 or 3 times to tell me that my son is a pro at Angry Birds (don't ask me where he learned it - Jeff and I never play that game).

When the woman's number got called, she gave Luke back to me. Luke gave me about 1.5 seconds of his time before turning his attention back to the man he had met in the row in front of us. The man sweetly offered, "You can come sit with me if you want." But I think Luke sensed that this man, like his mommy, didn't own a fancy iPhone or tablet to play Angry Birds on. Luke quickly set his sights on the young Masters student sitting next to me, who looked a lot like Tom from Parks and Rec and who had already kindly insisted on retrieving Luke's little plastic ball when Luke threw it across the room (another time Luke threw it into the rows of people behind us and everyone helped to pass it back up to us without a single complaint or dirty look). Luke, in his overly-friendly mood, tried to climb up onto this young man's lap. Another example of the kindness of strangers, the young man picked Luke up and took out his iPhone to play Angry Birds with him until his number was called 15 minutes later.

The last 25 minutes before my number was called were spent looking at pictures on my laptop with Luke, feeding him a snack in the car (no snacks allowed inside), and chasing him around the room while he excitedly ran a couple of laps around the rows of chairs and ran circles around a pole, and then, out of nowhere started running around on tip toe. I worried that people might be a little peeved and tried to contain my energetic boy, but through all of this, I didn't notice a single annoyed or judgmental face, just lots of smiling and laughing faces - at the DPS of all places!

Conclusion: I love people.


On an unrelated, but awesome side note: I am so proud of my brilliant, hardworking, practically perfect husband who, after just 4-5 months at GE, was nominated for an award by his boss's boss and won $100 for it! He's the coolest.