Thank you. That is the purpose of this column. I want to say “thanks.” I don't know you, but I believe in the good you do. Especially right now.
In public, I used to see you sometimes and think to myself: "I wish someone would thank them." But I never do because if I did, you’d think I was a complete nut job.
Maybe I am a nut job. But I’m allowed to be that way. After all, I am a columnist—sort of—and that means my proverbial box is missing a few crayons.
Long ago, I used to deliver newspapers with my mother. We used to deliver to a fella who would answer the door in pajamas. He had messy hair and a bushy white beard. He always gave me a five-dollar tip.
He was generous. If he wasn’t home one day, he would pay me ten bucks the next day. He was a columnist, my mother told me. And that’s why he was such a weirdo in weird pajamas. Even his house smelled weird.
I suppose I ought to thank him while I am at it.
Also, thanks to the man I saw in the gas station who bought a lottery scratch-off ticket. Who won thirty bucks, then turned around and gave the cash to a woman behind him in line. What a guy.
The woman thanked him in a language that sounded like Russian, but he didn't seem to understand, so he answered: “Alright.”
Thank you, Cindy—the woman who translated one of my speeches in American Sign Language for the front row. She told me I talked very fast and now she has problems with her rotator cuff.
She also taught me how to cuss in sign language.
Thank you to the seventy-year-old man who went back to school to get his GED. And his forty-six-year-old daughter, who tutored him.
And you. You deserve thanks, but you don't…