The Colour of Humility

"I want a medal for today."
I'm standing at the photocopier trying to fix a paper jam
when I say this to someone waiting
to see one of my coworkers.
It's been one of those days.
Brutal. Well, not really.
It just feels that way.

The person looks at me and says,
"Just go home and have a drink."
When I tell her I don't drink she says,
"Then go home and have some chocolate."
I don't eat chocolate either but I don't tell her that.
Which is a funny commentary if you think about it.
It's easier to tell people you don't drink than
that you don't eat chocolate.
I could just imagine her face contorting as she says,
"You don't eat chocolate?!"

Instead I finish fixing the photocopier in silence,
wipe the black spots of ink off my finger and go back to my desk.
Where I turn up my Christian music a little louder.
If you only knew my motives for that some days
you would puke.

Funnily enough. Or not as it turns out, one of my bigger frustrations today concerned someone who I was absolutely convinced thought was pulling a get-me-to- the-front-of-the-line sob story. So convinced was I that I let someone higher up the food chain know that I was on to that person in a who does she think she is kind of way.

Which led me to a getting a proverbial smack up the side of the head by reality. Yep, that happened when higher up the food chain person shut my office door and told me little miss front of the line's rest of the story. The real one. Not the ego driven, motive certain one I had made up all in my own little mind. The story I would have bet money on. And lost. She told me the one I could have only known if I had been God.

Humility. I can always use more of it.

When my oldest son was a toddler I used to wake up to him sitting under the kitchen table with the ketchup bottle in one hand and an arc of little red splotches holding court around him. Today it felt like God made the beginning of yet another arc right where I could see it. The red matches the colour of my face rather well.

Pretty soon I'm going to be surrounded by a sea of ketchup as all those arcs of humility/slaps up the side of the head that have been given to me over the years become one big blob.


Photo Credit