Memorial Day, 2013
It was a picture-perfect Memorial Day weekend. I hope you were able to get out and enjoy it, or see it through a window, or catch a few breaths of springtime air between work and the car and home and the chores that don't stop just because it's a national holiday.
I was sitting in a drive-in, being served by a carhop who thanked me for making her Sonic my Sonic, and then told me her name, as if I would actually say, "Hi, [insert name]. I'm James. Thank you for sharing your Sonic and making this happy hour slushie stop such an enjoyable event." But I wouldn't. She'd think I was sarcastic, or creepy, or needing a fresh mixer. Sharing your name and welcoming people to your business has become the new corporate faux-etiquette, and comes across exactly as what it is: a mandated script of tag-lines invented in the marketing department to create the illusion of hospitality and gratitude.
Enjoying my slushie, I listened to a radio interview with Brian Turner, a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army in Iraq. He talked about how it's almost obscene how many soldiers we bury whose names we never know, who never had the chance to receive anything close to sincere thanks for their service. He talked about how strange it is for returning vets to come home to a country who barely even thinks about the wars being fought, whose thanks and hospitality is both occasional and perfunctory.
Sincerity can't be manufactured. Gratitude can't be scripted. But both can be practiced until they're woven into the muscles of our hearts. If you know a veteran of Iraq or any other war, take a moment - not on Memorial Day - to send him or her a note of thanks. And, if you can't be genuine in your thanks to a carhop, at least catch her eye, smile, and tip well.
[The interview with Brian Turner and several of his poems can be found at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5126583]
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