How I found myself there…

Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which your mind leaves your body and its almost as if you are watching from the outside? Like, how the hell did I get here? Weeelll, I have been asking this a lot of myself of late, and particularly over the past year. And this is exactly what happened to me when I found myself at closing time at the restaurant, with a mop in my hand, making a futile attempt at mopping the floor. The restaurant is an awesome family-owned place and everyone does everything. Including the owners. We all wash dishes, bar tend (if of legal age), take orders, wait tables, and sweep and mop the floors.

Where I am coming from….

This is where I was made painfully aware that I had no idea how to mop floors. How the hell do you not know how to mop? You might ask. To be clear here, I am well aware and extremely grateful to have been raised in an upper middle class home. Both of my parents worked full-time jobs and I was able to attend affluent schools. We did not, however, have anyone to clean the house. That was all on us. My jobs were to dust the house, the baseboards (god I hate baseboards), and pick up the dog shit. No mopping involved there. And truly, throughout adulthood, I have never, until now, encountered a full-blown mopping situation. One where I have to mop a large area complete with rolling water bucket. Here is where, let’s call him Eduardo, steps in.

Eduardo to the Rescue…

So, here I am innocently mopping away going over, again, in my mind what sort of Twilight Zone episode my life has become. It is at this moment I hear a chuckle coming from behind me. “What?!” I exclaim. I am aware that the sight of me attempting to mop a floor has got to be a knee-slapper at the very least, but I want to hear it. “Don’t you know how to mop?!” Eduardo is staring at me as if I have just sprung a second head. To this, I simply stare blankly back at him. He takes this as a NO. Eduardo takes the mop from me. And y’all, I will tell you that if there were some kind of ballet/mop dancing competition, he would take home the trophy. He was smooth, he was graceful, and those floors shined like the north star. It was a lesson straight out of Dirty Dancing, if Patrick Swayze was a stick figure with unruly rope-hair. I chuckle to myself now thinking back on that night. One can never take oneself too seriously. Life is way too short for that shit.

The Lesson….

And so I learned to mop at 9 o’clock on a Saturday night from a guy who had been in a gang, who had been addicted to drugs and alcohol and come clean, who had been to prison. Eduardo is a kind, gentle giant. I am so grateful for my time with him. He told me about his time in the gang and how he got clean and even some tips and tricks for prison life (should I ever need them). He showed me how to place personal items so that you know if someone has been in your room or touched your things (surprisingly helpful when my college-age daughter comes home). Eduardo opened up my eyes to a life I had never been exposed to.

I would never have met Eduardo if it weren’t for my job. And I would’ve missed out. Leaving that night, I thought about the two very different homes and lives we were heading to. At the restaurant all differences vanish. If anything, he was definitely “above” me. I was a little bit of a fish out of water, as they say. He made me feel welcome. So while I may feel like my life is an episode of the Twilight Zone from time to time, these moments can be pretty damn cool as well. Plus, now if anyone ever needs help learning how to mop, I’m your girl.