My dad was possibly one of the last gentleman on Earth. Though he didn't invent the phrase, he would often admonish me to, "Respect the people you meet on the way up 'cause you'll be meeting them again on the way down."
I kind of understood, even when I was little. It's really a restatement of the Golden Rule. But it took one stormy evening for me to understand its wider implication.
I was ten or eleven, as I recall, and my mom, dad, and I were coming out of Sardi's restaurant in Manhattan (NYC). We'd had a late supper with friends of my parents. We needed a cab to Grand Central Station and the train home. At the time, Sardi's had a doorman, part of whose job was to wrangle taxis for waiting customers. His role was to make sure one's order of arrival at the curb was maintained.
We emerged into a windy, cold, and sleet-filled night. It was pretty awful and there were several dozen people who got there ahead of us and all of them were waiting for cabs. Cabs were stacked all the way up the block and the doorman was in the process of motioning the next one toward the restaurant.
I didn't grasp the moment until a long time after, but the doorman blocked the next group of people so that I and my parents literally did not miss a beat from the restaurant, to the sidewalk, and then into the next waiting cab.
I couldn't figure out why, though I was glad I didn't even have time to notice the cold.
I found out years later that my dad, in his respect for the "little people," had always remembered that doorman on his birthday with a small gift. He'd sent a note of condolence when the man's wife was hospitalized, and otherwise made him feel like an actual person. And the man, with no real reason to do anything at all, had always paid back my dad with small courtesies like that.
The lesson here is: You may own the fastest car on the planet, but it's going nowhere unless and until someone else builds the road.
I kind of understood, even when I was little. It's really a restatement of the Golden Rule. But it took one stormy evening for me to understand its wider implication.
I was ten or eleven, as I recall, and my mom, dad, and I were coming out of Sardi's restaurant in Manhattan (NYC). We'd had a late supper with friends of my parents. We needed a cab to Grand Central Station and the train home. At the time, Sardi's had a doorman, part of whose job was to wrangle taxis for waiting customers. His role was to make sure one's order of arrival at the curb was maintained.
We emerged into a windy, cold, and sleet-filled night. It was pretty awful and there were several dozen people who got there ahead of us and all of them were waiting for cabs. Cabs were stacked all the way up the block and the doorman was in the process of motioning the next one toward the restaurant.
I didn't grasp the moment until a long time after, but the doorman blocked the next group of people so that I and my parents literally did not miss a beat from the restaurant, to the sidewalk, and then into the next waiting cab.
I couldn't figure out why, though I was glad I didn't even have time to notice the cold.
I found out years later that my dad, in his respect for the "little people," had always remembered that doorman on his birthday with a small gift. He'd sent a note of condolence when the man's wife was hospitalized, and otherwise made him feel like an actual person. And the man, with no real reason to do anything at all, had always paid back my dad with small courtesies like that.
The lesson here is: You may own the fastest car on the planet, but it's going nowhere unless and until someone else builds the road.
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