A Road Less Travelled

I’ve liked the people I’ve met on this trip. I’ve liked the people I’ve only bumped into. I remember being shocked when I figured out what an extrovert I am, but I should have realized that a long time ago. I like people.

Technically the first people I met on this trip are James’s brother-in-law and niece, but I actually met them without spending a lot of time with them so there isn’t really much to say. I can write about people I know well or people I’ve only bumped into; I don’t have much to say about the group in the middle.

When I grow up I want to be a mixture of several people. Part my mother, part my grandmother, part a lady who acted like our grandmother when I was growing up, part the nifty old lady from that one movie. You know, the choir director with the dreads. And now I must add another lady to my list. When I grow up and become gray and stooped I want part of me to be Grandma Rhodes. And I want to be married to a man who is partly Grandpa Rhodes. Those two have been married for just over sixty years now. He is stone deaf and in the last few years has deteriorated badly so that now he mostly just sleeps. But I can still see the bones of who he had been and who’s still in there under all the tiredness. Grandpa Rhodes strikes me as a man who does what needs to be done and does his living for his Lord. And Grandma Rhodes tries to be the world’s servant and comes pretty close to succeeding. When we were staying with them I kept trying to get her to sit down. “Sit down, Grandma!” I would say, but she hasn’t learned yet that I like people to listen to me when I boss them. She was always up, getting this or that for Grandpa Rhodes, making lunch or dinner, doing laundry, making sure everyone was comfortable. We headed for the bathroom at the same time once when we were both getting ready for bed and I soundly lost the ensuing niceness fight. I was doing my utmost- I even went back to my room, but I am no match for Grandma Rhodes when she wants to sacrifice for someone. And when I grow up I want to be like that. But I want to sit down more.

There was a movie made called The Terminal. It is about a man who, through some plot maneuvering and fancy footwork on the part of the screen writers, is stuck in the JFK Airport terminal. He can’t enter the USA and he refuses to go home. The movie would have made a much better TV show because it was essentially episodic in nature, but what I loved about it was that it focused on the other side of an airport. The three main supporting characters were a janitor, a man who loads baggage and a man who drives the food supply truck. It was a movie about the overlooked. Staying at this hotel makes me want to make a TV show about the other side of a hotel. The overlooked workers who mostly blend into the woodwork.

The parking valet guys at the hotel in Philadelphia are awesome. They would be a main part of the ensemble. I was trying to explain a strange noise we heard to Moriah while we were waiting by the van to see if we could check in and where we could park the van. To be funny, I told her the noise she heard was a car being startled. Just then a valet pulled up in a car, got out and started examining it for any nicks or scratches. I told Moriah that if we snuck up on that car and yelled BOO! it would probably make that strange noise. The valet heard me and laughed. He went up several points in my book for laughing with us.

There are at least two restaurants in the lobby of this hotel. I say there are at least two because those are the two we have eaten in. I think there is a third somewhere, but we didn’t eat there so for my purposes it doesn’t exist. There is a waitress who works for the very upscale restaurant we ate at two days ago. She fell in love with Margary and kept making faces at her and cooing to make her giggle and laugh. The next night we ate in a small dining room at the sports bar with the music that was slightly too loud and the televisions they muted for us. We were waiting for our food and Margary was getting fussy. She had had a hard day and was very tired. The waitress from the night before was walking by and stopped in to see the baby. She asked why Margary was fussy and we said she was just tired and hungry. The waitress said she was going to go ask our waitress if we could have some bread or something. Our waitress said they didn’t have breadbaskets or anything like that so the waitress said that she was going to go back to her restaurant and get us some bread. She left and came back with two breadbaskets for us. Margary just threw hers on the floor, but she had fun doing it. Before we checked out we stopped in and let the waitress say goodbye to the baby. She was such a cool lady.

So far everyone at the Reading Terminal Market have been very pleasant. From slightly detached pleasant all the way answering my questions on bonsai and showing us the weirdest plant I’ve ever seen. The man at the Spice Terminal even remembered me when Raquel and I went back later without any children. I told him he had ligonberries and couldn’t keep me away. I love people who play along with me when I talk to them. I tell them the hairstick wanted to come home with me though I thought I should pay first and she didn’t look at me strangely she just chuckled and said that was fine with her. If I ever get a service job again I want to play along with whoever comes my way. I want to be the nifty person behind the counter. Because when you meet someone behind the counter who is truly nifty you have found a good thing.