A Trustworthy Face At The Los Angeles Airport

     Yesterday, after a 10-day visit to Los Angeles,

...Tom and I were waiting around in the Los Angeles airport, already crowded at 6 am,

… for our flight back to Columbus.

    We were sitting at an electronics charging station charging our stuff,

…when a young guy sitting in one of the spaces in a row of seats on the other side of the charging station called over to me and asked me if I would keep an eye on his things, which  consisted of a couple of bags and a nice-looking computer tablet.  

     I said, “Sure” and walked over to take the seat next to his stuff.
     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.”
       The guy was gone for about five minutes, and I sat there looking at all the people around me, most of whom were probably as honest as could be and would never dream of stealing another’s unguarded property,

...still, you never know, and there are enough dishonest people out there that things are stolen all the time.
    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, at least I’ve always had a face that people read as honest and trustworthy.

​    “In the eye abides the heart,” wrote Stephen Foster.

     Or at least that’s true in my case.