Old

1.  Yesterday it was already dark as I was walking home at the end of the day. At one point, I passed a man holding on to a concrete half-wall, who was walking … weirdly. Carefully. I have a background in problems with walking so watched him for a few seconds. It wasn't a limp, it wasn't quite … anything else. I sighed. "Hey. Hey!" I walked back since at this point he'd already passed me. "Sir? Sir, are you okay?" 

He turned to face me, and that let me see he was an older man. He smiled. "I'm fine; I'm just old. Thank you, dear." I smiled back. "Okay, have a good night." A friend once told me that she likes to make homeless people feel like people, by acknowledging them. This guy may have been walking alone, but hopefully he felt good knowing he was noticed. 

2.  An out-of-town company is borrowing our conference room. There are several guys* representing this company, and they have back-to-back meetings with other companies for a few days straight. I know one guy – the one who made the reservation. This morning when he arrived he stood in front of my desk, doing that smile men do when they're trying to control their anger. I bit. "What's going on?" He unloaded, and told me how furious he was at his team, how he got sent to a meeting nobody else showed up for, only to find out it'd been cancelled and nobody had updated the Outlook invite to reflect that. Then he sighed, "Time to ream out the troops," before heading into the conference room. 

This evening we were chatting and he mentioned something about the boss being in the conference room right at that moment. "I thought you were the boss," I confessed. He corrected me with a grin. "I'm just the oldest." 

*  Everyone in the company that's renting our conference room is male and white. Every single person representing each company that's come to meet with that first company? Also male and white. I wonder if it's the industry (although what industry besides the KKK only accepts white males?), or the level of positions within each company (although that would be sad too).  They're all very nice. Perfectly gentlemanly and all. Just ... male. And white.