An Impromptu Visit with the Doctor.

Yesterday was my birthday.

Birthdays are typically uncomfortable experiences for me. I spend the whole day in a sort of distant state of contemplation, pondering my life and its direction. All of this thinking happens while everyone around me is wanting to be really happy toward me and to involve me in their happiness. I then feel guilt, as I'm not able to properly receive everyone's warm wishes with an appropriate amount of energy and gratitude. In any birthday interaction with my family, this guilt is combined with the guilt I often feel for not spending adequate time with my family, so interactions with them are especially uncomfortable for me every September 1st.

For the last several years now, my birthday discomfort has been further compounded by the Minnesota State Fair. My father is the co-owner of the RC Cola booth, home of the cheapest pop at the fair. Every day of the fair until 4 o'clock, one can find my father doing one of a short list of things:

-Obsessively spraying and wiping the stainless steel counters where clients are served and small amounts of pop are routinely spilled.
-Changing syrup boxes so that the workers inside the booth can continue to sell pop.
-Eating breakfast at a stand just a few feet from the booth, taking one of the few opportunities he gets to relax during the twelve days in which the fair is open.
-Saying one of the following things to customers: "How goes your day?" "Oh, you have a helper today" - which is said to parents with very small children, and "Have a great one."
-Fraternizing with the people working at the booth or with the guy who brings the ice to the booth, trying to make someone else's day better at a time where he works harder and has more demanded of him than most anyone he'll run into.

I'm writing all of those things about my father so that you might be able to imagine the energy and warmth with which he greets me when he sees me at the booth on my birthday. I feel terrible. I just can't muster the ability give to him what he so easily gives to me on that day.

So on my birthday, mentally disconnected from most things that are happening to me throughout the day, I usually run into my father, creating what becomes the most uncomfortable moment of the day.

This year, it had one hell of a silver lining.

I was in the middle of this moment, with my friends Dan and Sarah standing next to me (as they had accompanied me to the fair that day), talking with my father. We were a few feet north of the RC Cola booth standing in a circle, my father facing the booth and me facing the other way. Whatever we were talking about, it was interrupted by my father telling me: "there's Doc Ettel, Jon. Go shake his hand."

I wouldn't have needed any convincing to be motivated to shake Doc Ettel's hand; my dad just wanted to make someone's day better by having him run into someone he hasn't seen in a while. I turned around and saw Doc Ettel purchasing a glass of RC Cola, in large part (I imagine) out of loyalty to my father.

Doc Ettel's real first name is Roger. My dad calls him Doc because he does something medical for a living. I think he's a chiropractor, but I'm not really sure. Doc Ettel has a face I would love to have when I'm sixty-something. By that I mean that he has wrinkles in his cheeks and around his eyes that you can tell came from a lifetime of smiling at people with an admirable sincerity. His face is generally somber, but when he smiles you can see a life's worth of warmth in it.

When I was growing up, my grandmother lived a street away from my family. Doc Ettel lived (and still lives, with his wife Betty) in the house next to what was my grandmother's house. Their yards were separated by a steep and grassy hill. When I was 14 or 15, Doc Ettel paid me a hundred dollars to help him and Betty with a little landscaping work, putting some nice brick steps in the hill with rocks on either side. It looked good and was very satisfying work. While we worked, Betty would bring out a can of pop every now and then for us to enjoy. There was A&W root beer and Sprite, and Roger always allowed me to choose which I preferred. Since those few days, we've always greeted one another warmly when we've run into one another, taking a short moment to catch up. I had seen Doc Ettel maybe 15 or 20 times then, in a span of a dozen years or so.

I walked away from my father and my friends, over to the booth where Doc Ettel had just received his glass of RC Cola. "How ya doin', Rodge?" I shook his hand, trying not to think about my father telling me to moments earlier. Doc was pleasantly surprised to see me, and I got to see that smile I hope to grow into someday. We got to talking for a moment, and he asked me what I had been up to. I told him about my recent trip to Colombia and about a few other things. He was so happy to hear about the course my life had taken. He then told me that I (along with my family) had been on his daily prayer list ever since we worked together for sixteen hours that one summer.

Even if I hadn't been in the sort of mental state that typifies my birthdays, I would still have been completely dumbfounded. Some people are unbelievably good to people. My father spends the most stressful and demanding portion of his year doing every tiny thing he can to improve one of a million people's day. Doc Ettel has been praying for me every day for a dozen years.

I was then reminded of something I've been thinking about recently: in my mind, not much of anything is better or more gratifying or more fun than being good to people. If I can take the next thirty years and become as good at it as my father or Doc Ettel, I'll be pretty satisfied.