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From Pinstriped Banker to Janitor Part V: A Few Final Thoughts
by Jim Wellington
(Chicago)
In every way my life had improved. But I had to get used to the very different responses I encountered every day from others. Working with the earth every day in the sun and in the wind changed my skin and appearance, as did my new clothes: jeans, overalls, sweatshirts and tee shirts. My hands and arms were slowly toughening and I had dirt under my nails; my hair was pulled into in a rubber band and my beard was now becoming thicker. I looked less and less like a corporate executive each day. My speech slowed down from the clipped tone of a busy banker. The clean hands of a corporate financier morphed into the calloused hands of a working-man.
No one would allow me into a boardroom or on to a corporate jet as I now looked! But as the walls crumbled I found that I communicated with people in a real way. Everyday life was filled with moments of connection rather than with one busy appointment after another. I was no longer consumed with the endless flow of numbers telling me how much the stock market had moved. I no longer saw people with dollar signs above their heads. I think only someone else who has known both worlds can understand the sense of freedom.
After explaining all that my teachers had done for me, the question then is: What did I do for them? They asked for so little. But they did both ask for something.
Delores asked me for my cuff links and for my wristwatch, which she then gave to her cousin. She then told me that Pedro did want something from me, but didn’t want to ask. Finally I got it out of him.
He told me that since he was a boy in Mexico he had wanted a formal suit. By that, he meant the formal white tie and tails. He had noticed that I had this outfit among my clothes and asked if he might have it.
He was a garbage man! He was certain I would laugh at him. But I didn’t. That was a dream he had. They were the ultimate symbol of my former life: I had bought them for an award dinner. Now they would belong to the man who picked up my garbage. Poetic justice!
Of course! I was finally able to do something for the man who had done so much for me. I presented him with the entire outfit. Pedro is several inches shorter than I am, but a tailor soon shortened and altered the jacket and the trousers so they fit him. The starched shirt was also altered.
I will finish my story as I began, with shoes – those powerful symbols of status and change. I had owned a pair of very expensive black patent leather pumps that I had bought to go with the white tie. Pedro could not get them on, so a shoemaker stretched them and widened them until they fit him. He was also given the black silk socks that went with them. Pedro’s dream was to take Delores to a New Year’s Eve party dressed in these clothes. Well, it happened. The formal clothes and shoes that – literally and symbolically - no longer fit me had been altered for my garbage man friend, and now he literally stood in my white tie and tails with his feet in my patent leather shoes. As they drove off to the big event they left me happily content and relaxed – and shoeless.
That sums up my story.
You may enjoy reading the entire series of articles by Jim Wellington where he shares his journey to finding his authentic self.
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