We Are Community 273
I am safely home, the car is in the garage and for that I am most grateful. It has been an interesting weekend and whether this is a good idea, I have decided to tell you about some of it. I have been doing 3rd Sunday Market in Bloomington since it began 37 years ago. There have been some good times and some bad times. The good times far outweigh the bad. I love the show owners. I have watched their family grow up.
Last week I told you that my hotel reservation was cancelled by the owners of the hotel in hopes of getting more for the room than what my rate was. Luckily, I was able to room with a friend at a different hotel.
Got there fine, got set up and sold several things on Saturday. Had a nice dinner and a good evening. Got to the fairgrounds on Sunday morning to find a gentleman backing a truck with a trailer load of pumpkins out of the drive to my building. I admired his courage as I knew that I could not back a truck with a trailer. When I started to my building, I realized why he was backing up. A vender and a truck and trailer had the road blocked. So, I backed up too.
There was a great crowd but I did not sell well on Sunday. That is fine, not every show is wonderful. Why I am telling you all this is because of the way several potential “customers” saw fit to treat me today. It is not a good thing to treat others badly. I will tell you about only one incident but I had more rudeness today than probably in the last two years all together. It was near the end of the show and I had a great quilt displayed on the wall. As I said, had not been selling well so agreed to a very generous discount to try to sell the quilt. When I told the “customer” what the total was, she refused to pay the tax. Then she wanted to put it on a credit card. I explained that I could not do the discount, eat the tax and then eat the credit card fee too. The quilt was thrown on the floor and the people in the booth next to me heard someone being called a “bitch”. When they figured out that was directed at me, they wished they had known sooner so “they could have slapped her”. Not really, but I understood what they meant and appreciated their support. Soon another dealer came to my booth and gave me a big hug and told me he loved me. I needed that!
The point of all this. We currently live in a world where it seems ok to hate anyone. But it is not ok to be hateful. It is not ok to be rude. It is not ok to bully others. It is not ok to demand and demand and then “throw the quilt on the floor”.
I have a good life. Some of my friends do not. Some are alone. Some are sick. Some have lost family or friends. Some do not have enough money to be comfortable. Some do not have any support system or a religious faith to help comfort them. Be kind! It costs you nothing. Showing Kindness and Love is the right thing to do. To quote John Wesley “Do all the GOOD you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can”.