So I answer the door.
"Hello," she says, holding up a bottle of Biogeneric environmentally correct solution, "I'm selling cleaning solution."
"Sorry, I don't use it," I reply.
She tries to hand me a flyer.
"Can't hold that," I say. "My hands are paralyzed."
"Both?"
I look down. "Yup." Figured I'd check, just to see if there'd been a change. "Look, I don't clean."
"Well," she says, putting on a chipper look, "someone must clean FOR you, so wouldn't they want a bottle of this?"
I think of Meredith and can hear her say "You only bought this because you felt sorry for the person, right?" and I reply "No, not really. I don't have any use for it. But I do have cold bottled water - would you like one?"
"Oh yes," she says. She looks frazzled, hot and very tired. So I bring her a bottled water in the crook of my elbow and she watches my every move. (Looking back, I think she was considering if she could convince me I could hold a mop that way and clean and then I would need cleaning solution.)
But she just said "What's your name?" and I told her. Then she said "Thank you, Ruth."
So I suppose, in a way,I wound up giving her a break from being treated like a door to door saleswoman rather than a person. And I realized, after she left, that perhaps that's one of the reasons why I offer people cold water in the heat.
3 comments:
Thank you for being the face of Christ, unannounced, to someone who needed to see that face.
Interesting story, you have to give the woman credit for tenacity, not a lot of people could go from "I can't use either hand" to still selling to someone who might come and clean for you. Either that or she was just insensitive, dunno. If it was girl scout cookies, would you have bought them?
Only if they were the mint flavor :)
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