{Trigger Warning. Nothing bad, really, but it's not a fluff story.}789Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo8F0QzGhB0
The best piece of advice anyone has ever given me was provided by a janitor.
It sounds ridiculous, I know, but you haven’t let me explain yet.
It was a chilly, brisk day. An Autumn day, to be precise, and Autumn is my favorite time of year. The leaves, turned beautiful by hardship, yet never, never to be immortal, always to fall, to wither and rot, to die. I was in school, of course. It might’ve been a Wedsday, a Tuesday, or perhaps a Thursday, I don’t quite remember, although I do know it was around the middle of the week. Anyways… It was a bit of a rough time for me. I was in a private school, you see. Although at that point I’d been at the school for a little over two years, I wasn’t accepted. There were fifteen other children in my class, and two of them were girls. All of the other kids had known each other since grade one or two. So, naturally, I was out of place. The fact that I wore almost exclusively all black when I could and often got lost in my reading didn’t help either.
At that point, I spent most of a school day hiding in the bathroom, holding my head parallel to the sink and letting the tears drip out so as not to stain my eyes red. Nobody would ask questions, nobody would know, I thought. But then, nobody ever thinks about the janitor.
He came into the bathroom for what I can only guess was only a routine cleaning and found me in there, gently taking my shoulder and bringing me into his office. He didn’t say anything for a while, only let me stand there in that room, not offering me a seat. Finally, he spoke.
“It’s that bad, Meredith.” I knew it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Most of my teachers witnessed the ridicule, the hissed words, the shoves and pokes and threats. None of them did anything about it. They couldn’t, really. Not when the worst of it was aimed at me by the principal’s granddaughter. I didn’t say anything to his words. I couldn’t. I was busy, trying to keep the redness out of my eyes, to deny them of something else to pick on me for. It was silent a moment before he spoke again. “You’ve seen the ducks at the river, haven’t you?” I nodded, swallowing hard. The river – the Canadian Thames, it was close to my school. You could see it from the playground, and sometimes it flooded to our climbers’. “Do you know how they stay dry, how they barely drip at all once they leave the water?” I shook my head, looking at him, watching, not knowing where he was going with it. “Ducks have a sort of oil on their feathers. It protects them from water, it slips right off, and they barely get wet at all. You can be that duck, the water can be their words.” I swallowed, looking up at him. My eyes were red, my face a mess. “Water off a duck’s back.” I nodded. We must’ve stayed there for at least another ten or twenty minutes, because as I watched him curiously, the bell rang. “You’d better get off to class, Meredith, before you’re missed.” I nodded, turning to the door.
“Thank you.” I whispered as I walked through, making my way back to my classroom. To this day, I don’t know whether he heard me or not, but I sincerely hope he did. I got through that time, thanks to those words. When things got hard, I thought of it. Water off a duck’s back. That’s not to say it helped much. I still cried – I still do. I still felt worthless, I still felt ashamed and terrible and overall like I wanted to die. That doesn’t mean it didn’t help, that it doesn’t help. It helped, and still helps, because somebody cared enough to sit me down, even for a half hour, and talk to me. Talk to me, like I was real and cherished and respected. I still recall that conversation, if you can call it that. All it took was a half hour of someone’s time. And even if he was a janitor, I still respect him more than I do most people, because he’s one of the few that took that time, that little bit of time.
{I went over... whoops. Didn't mean to, but it was good to get this off my chest.}789Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs4ImnG8qqh
