In the KCI cellphone lot, a generous immigrant showed me what July 4 is all about | Opinion
Last week, my wife was visiting her folks in Detroit, and my husbandly duty was to pick her up at our new airport terminal. I’d been sitting at my desk with my trusty cellphone — my brain assistant and omnipresent right hand — on a charger. Leaving according to my very Yekke “right on time” plan to retrieve my beloved from the perils of flight, I intended to park momentarily in Kansas City International’s newish cellphone lot, and within a few minutes head off to the Arrivals lane.
But as I pulled into the parking lot, packed with other spouses and drivers, I realized my personal computer — my means of communication, my connection to the world, aka my iPhone — alas rested back on its charger at my office desk. I was marooned!
In front of me appeared a parking spot adjacent to a suburbanish looking woman, Johnson County, I surmised. I pulled in to ask if she’d lend me her phone for a moment, pleading my plight. I just want to leave a message for my wife — please.
The nice lady, an Olathe resident of race, age and car similar to my own, said she’d call my wife’s number and leave her a message. She didn’t trust this stranger not to make off with her phone, and who can blame her? She said her husband had just called and she’d be departing the lot in a moment, but she would leave the message.
Now my partner in life would know she could not contact me, but how would I know when she emerged to collect her? OMG, the vicissitudes of JoCo living. Such trauma. Such challenges.
What to do? The nice Olathe lady suggested that perhaps there was a phone in the building in the cellphone parking lot, so off I went on foot hunting a pay phone — remember those? — being careful to take a few quarters with me just in case.
No phone. Only restrooms for elderly JoCo men awaiting their spouses arrival with aging bladders. But — and here’s the big but — half a dozen men were gathered outside the building, all but one speaking a language I never did figure out. I am guessing they are drivers for a living, just awaiting customers I conjectured, and having what appeared to be a very fun time whiling and waiting in friendship.
From the porch elevated slightly above them, interrupting and requesting their attention, I pleaded my plight. The largest of the men, in girth and height, came forward with a big smile and said, “We’ve all done that.” Then, he gave me his phone to use myself, in my own grubby hand.
With his phone, I reached my wife, who had not received the message from the Olathe lady.
Wanting to just be appreciative, I held out a $5 bill to the good Samaritan, who promptly refused. It wasn’t, “You’re insulting me,” nor “That’s too little.” No, his refusal was like: “Yeah, that’s what Americans do — they pay for everything. But where I come from, we do kindnesses for people, not for money, but because kindnesses are what life’s about. Not money.”
OK, that’s how I read his face. But clearly, he didn’t want anything in return. He was just being kind. It’s a simple virtue, but in disrepair at the very least.
And it made me wonder about our culture, where everything has a monetary value — even kindness. I didn’t know whether to be ashamed or sad, but I certainly was grateful and impressed. These men value life, friendship and kindness to strangers. They’re immigrants, speak at least two languages and I’m guessing earn a modest living. I envy their rock-solid kindness to a stranger and refusal to monetize benevolence.
Happy July Fourth, from a grateful citizen of the land where almost everyone came from somewhere else to live among strangers who seek to be free.
I am going to try, in my piddling way, to cross a social barrier to be kind. That’s maybe the best tip I can give him, to pay forward his embrace of living.