Keeping Me Humble

5-3-2012

Standing in the lobby of the Quality Inn Hotel after a 24-hour journey, I felt a huge relief come over me and all I could think about was, “Thank goodness I am finally here”, as I felt my body and brain shutting down.  I either needed a bed to fall into or a floor to spread out on.  Speaking English, in his Portuguese accent, the well-dressed fellow behind the marble topped check in desk asked us, “Wuld jew lack soom café, yes?”  I looked at this angelic being and answered, “Si.” 

I thought things were going to be much better from this moment forward and stepped toward my new friend to grab the hot dark rich espresso, when my travel companion, Dave Andersen asked, “Hey wick…do you know you have a big hole in the back of your pants?”  I half smiled, looking at him with tired puffy eyes and he said, “I’m serious.”  I began to review the last 24 hours in my head.

When my dear friend Angela Head dropped me off at the Florence, South Carolina airport, I knew that I had a pretty long trip ahead of me.  If I can just get to the rocking chairs in the Charlotte airport, I thought, then I can take care of some more emails and communication stuff before I have to get on that first flight to Dallas Fort Worth.  To my, not so surprised self, my flight to DFW was delayed…for two hours.  So I waited for the first available rocking chair like a vulture waits for someone to drop in the desert.  Charlotte is famous for the rocking chair areas and I was not going to be left un-rocked. 

It is great fun to watch us humans, as grown people of all ages, casually stand around the folks already in the chairs.  Like a large game of musical chairs, as someone’s bottom is coming out of a chair, another bottom is getting ready to plant itself there, and timing the exchange is crucial because of the enormous amount of travelers that have had the same idea as you have had since they started their journey.  I spotted someone packing away his computer and so I moved in closer and tried to look as large and scary as possible, sort of the way lions hover over their new kill, and when they moved…I made my move.

Playing that part of my trip over in my mind instantly as my friend tells me, “You know you have a big hole in the back of your pants,” I remember watching the fellow who had just un-bunned the rocking chair that I was now claiming.  He instantly grabbed the back of his pants!  Then after he walked a few feet away, he became more intent on trying to see what had happened to the back of his pants.  I stood there in the lobby, in Vitoria, Brazil, with a hot shot glass size cup, made of thin plastic and filled halfway with dark espresso, and I said out loud and with a smile on my face…”It is the way that God keeps me humble.” 

As I sipped my hot nectar, I thought to myself, “Now I know why momma told me to always have on clean underwear.”  The hotel clerk said, “Seer, yure kee du yure rum.”  I took the key…smiled at the group watching the guy with a hole the size of a Mini Cooper in his pants…and walked toward the elevator that would take me away toward my room.

In Brazil….Wick Jackson