Having apparently expected me to just keep an eye on his stuff from my spot several yards across the room, the youngster said with a smile, “Wow, you’re really rising to the occasion,” and thanked me.
“Well,” I joked, “if I’m gonna babysit, I’m gonna babysit.”
And so I pondered being deemed by a total stranger in an airport as trustworthy to guard his things.
And it occurred to me that, for all the times in my life that people have sized me up as a push-over, clueless, incompetent, addle-brained and helpless; for all the times I’ve actually been all those things, along with confused, indecisive and insecure; for all the dumb, wrong, ignorant and regrettable decisions and choices I’ve made,