To This Day…

I had seen the animated short “To This Day…” by Shane Koyczan when it went viral on youtube and remembered being touched by his sentiments.  This version from the 2013 TED Conference with backstory, is even better.  It brought back a flood of memories, both good and bad.  More than that, it reminded me of just how far I’ve come.  Bullies have no hold over me now.  None.  I know that should seem obvious, since I’m 48 years old but, it isn’t always a given.  Without doing work on ourselves, growing and stretching, the patterns of our youth often become set in stone.  Yes, like a lot of people, I was bullied as a kid.  But, that’s in the past.

I had a concrete example of that just a few weeks ago.

I was working on a set of cabinets in a house.  Just putting the finishing touches on them and had to knock a couple of things back into place with a hammer and that gets kind of loud.

All of a sudden, I hear swearing and some guy from an electrical company stomps up the stairs from the basement.  When he sees me (the source of the noise) he yells, “DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING LOUD THAT IS IN AN EMPTY FUCKING BASEMENT!?!?!?!”

“Sorry, dude…” I said.  “I didn’t even know you were down there.  I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

To which he replied (still yelling), “IT BETTER FUCKING STOP RIGHT NOW, ASSHOLE!!!”

And I admit, that got to me.  Just enough to make me obstinate.  I looked him right in the eye, which wasn’t too hard ’cause he was right in front of me, and said, “Or what?”

Still yelling, “JUST TRY IT AND SEE!!!”  Such a non-answer.

I chuckled, turned away from him and went back to work.  When I looked up, he was gone.  Outside, stomping around, slamming stuff around in his company van.  Then I phoned the site supervisor and had him come over to deal with it.  He kicked the guy off the site.  Banned him from working there.  🙂