Dumb, Thoughtless Kid Stuff

And what I learned from it.

I read an essay on Substack today about gratitude at Michael Mohr’s Sincere American Writing (//www.michaelmohrwriter.com) that got me thinking of something that happened during my own callow youth that still causes me to cringe.

Once day, when I was a kid in a rush, I cut in front of a guy driving a van so I could get to the gas pump first. I knew he was heading for the pump because no one was using it, but I managed to outmaneuver him. When the driver using the other side of the pump finished, the guy in the van drove up next to it. From the corner of my eye, I watched as he lowered a wheelchair from the van, muscled himself into it and started filling his gas tank. He then turned his attention to me. “How is your day going, son?” He was gratingly cheerfully just to humiliate me for cutting him off, I thought.

I mumbled something about not very good, and turned the question back to him. He smiled.

“My wife loves me, my kids love me, my dog loves me. If things were any better, I wouldn’t know how to act.” When he finished, I felt like he was towering above me in that wheelchair. I also felt like the north end of a south-bound horse, and looking back, I know I deserved to feel that way. But I learned a lesson that stuck. I learned a lot about how gratitude doesn’t depend on circumstances. It’s something you choose to practice, in the same way one can choose to be arrogant, entitled, or selfish. The guy in the van had a lot he could complain about, but he chose to be grateful instead.

Gratitude can be a life changer, both for those of us who finally learn how to be grateful and because of those who share their gratitude with us. Life without gratitude is simply too hard. We all need more of it.

I am still grateful to that guy at the gas pump who taught me something I never forgot. Gratitude Guy, wherever you are, thank you, and for the rest of us, let’s be that guy.