Never Have I Ever

I am not a religious person. Spiritual? Yes. Religious? Not exactly. I have a life surrounded by people from various different religious backgrounds and I see nothing wrong with any them. You need to believe in what you know is right.

With that being said, an interesting interaction happened between me and the sweetest old man at the library yesterday.

It happened towards the end of the day, late afternoon because we close at 5:00pm on Saturdays. He walked in while I was checking out books to a girl about my age and said to her, "That girl right there" -- aka me -- "she can tell you the answer to anything you want to know."

At first I thought he was trying to be a prick, like that girl right there, she thinks she's so smart but watch out for her...

But I quickly realized that he wasn't joking and that he was just trying to be nice. So I said back, "You're putting a lot of faith in the answers of a person you don't know." And he laughed.

The girl left and he walked up to the counter and told me he was looking for a book on the Hebrew alphabet. He'd taken a specific one out before, but he couldn't remember the title, but he'd like to have that one again.

Unfortunately, our system doesn't keep a list of books people have previously checked out for privacy reasons. This has been a major complaint from a lot of our patrons. But we just can't, because there isn't an option in our system to do so. And also we just don't, because we don't want judgements passed on people based on the type of books they check out. I think this is reasonable.

So needless to say I couldn't just look this book up for this smiley old grandpa even though I would have been all too happy to do so. And I told him that, which he said was perfectly understandable. As I searched our system for books that matched his description, he laughed at the speed of my typing.

"Done this a few times before?" He asked.

"Just a few." I replied.

I found a few titles that I thought might match his book, but none of them rang a bell. So I decided to direct him to the reference desk.

"They're better than me at finding things," I explained. "They could find anything really. I'm even pretty sure they know where all of the world's lost socks are, they just haven't told us yet."

With a thank you, the man walked off to the reference desk in further search of this mysterious Hebew alphabet book.

Around fifteen minutes later he was back.

"Well, they've found one," he said all smiles still. "They're sending out for it. But in the meantime, I'm going to check this one out, too. It looks useful."

"Excellent," I said taking the book from him. "I'm so happy you were able to find what you were looking for."

"You are a blessing," he said.

And I froze. I don't usually like it when people say things like this to me. It makes me uncomfortable.

"It's true," he explained. "Do you know what a blessing is?"

I said that I wasn't really sure, cringing just a little, but not enough to show. It's not that I didn't want him to call me a "blessing," because he most certainly could... it's just once someone starts saying things like "blessing" the conversation usually goes down a road I'm not too fond of talking about. I didn't want him to ruin his sweet-old-man-ness by trying to turn me to the path of God.

So he explained to me what a blessing was, which to be honest, I've mostly forgotten. But it was very sweet what he explained it to be. Almost as if he knew I didn't want him to tell me how great God was and how I should know that He is watching out for me.

"Well, thank you." I said, unsure of what the best possible response was.

Okay, so he was just being nice. It was kind of sweet to be honest. I handed his book back to him.

"May God bless you," he said so genuinely and heartfelt that I thought I might literally burst into flames. I even had to hold up my arms in front of me to make sure I was still standing. Because, whatever I may or may not believe, I was sure that at that moment I might have been struck down because this random old man decided to waste his most sincere blessing on a girl he barely knew.

Unsure how to properly respond, I went with, "Thanks. You too."

Then I felt stupid.

That wasn't right, was it? I thought. People don't say, "you too!" to something like this. They say... well, what do they say?! 

"Have a nice day!" I continued, waving as he walked away.

And then I realized... of all the religious people I have ever met in my life, of any belief or denomination, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, etc., this mysterious old man was the first one I had ever met that had moved me in any way what-so-ever. And all he said was, "May God bless you."

I felt this way because it was so overwhelming to know that a complete stranger could so unaffectedly say something to me that very obviously meant so much to them. It didn't feel fake or contrived or forceful. But honest, like I think it is supposed to be.