Before you fill out a negative customer service survey, please ask yourself if you want the person who served you to lose their job.
You have no idea how devastating negative surveys are.
USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.
I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.
Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.
In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.
This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.
The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.
So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.
The owner asked if everything was okay.
"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."
He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"
I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.
I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.
So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.
And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.
Reborn.
A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.
@BrocktonPolice can you put a cruiser at Pearl and Belmont? Somebody runs the red literally every light cycle. Just almost got hit broadside. Please and thanks.
@TheGunzShow It just keeps getting better and better. And pay attention to those little old guy snippets at the beginning of each episode. They matter.
@MikeBinderjokes Hi Mike! Very moved by your story. I’ve thought a lot about you over the years.
Bob Nixon handed me your script for Reign Over Me. I thought it was brilliant - that and 25th Hour are the two most important film takes about coping with 9/11. Thanks for being you.
@JimJones4256@BBGreatMoments Pedro and Randy did it during peak roid era. His first two innings of the 99 All Star game is the best pitching performance in history, K-ing Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, Sosa, McGwire and Bagwell.