Today I had blood drawn to figure out why, oh why, after all these months I am still incapable of getting pregnant again (no angst there), and then, because it was a fasting blood test and I was about to faint, I got an oatmeal at Starbucks. In both places, I had the sense of being cared for by efficient, warm, service-industry people who had to get through hundreds of transactions a day but still managed to be kind to me, the individual customer they might never see again. I've been reading a psychology book about people who have trouble interacting socially (diagnoses like autism and severe antisocial tendencies). I thought how, at a basic animal level, my psyche would interpret both encounters as random strangers expressing caring for me, and if I was antisocial, they might represent a small bit of progress.
The phlebotomist greeted me with a warm smile and asked me if I'd had a good weekend. While she was filling up vials with my blood, she said, "Doing ok?" She was calm and reassuring, the kind of person I could imagine coaching me through any painful experience. The Starbucks cashier said "Sure thing" when I gave my order. A few minutes later, another employee noticed me standing there, even though the place was crowded and busy, and asked "What are you waiting on, ma'am?" and when I said oatmeal, he pushed the bag that had been sitting on the counter (which I had suspected was mine but was too shy to reach for) over to me. I thought it was so nice that he even noticed I had been standing there for several minutes. He could easily have ignored me and focused on serving more assertive customers. I walked out with my oatmeal (delicious - warm, perfectly cooked - and it comes with a packet of brown sugar, some dried fruit, and nuts to mix in), feeling, even though I had just conducted business transactions with various strangers - loved.
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