catching a ride.

I loved Bode Miller's quote today, a day after he won the bronze medal in the Vancouver Olympics by the equivalent of three hummingbird wing flaps, or approximately 21 inches. He said, (and give me a little latitude here, it's from memory) "I could have come in fourth and I would have felt just as good." There's so much hype around how close the race was, the fact that he is now the most decorated American male alpine skier, and four years of distance from his wildly laissez-faire Torino appearance, so I am thinking that for once he will be given a hall pass. NBC even charitably said he could "be called many things but he's definitely his own person." NOW it's ok to be your own person? I can just hear the tsk tsk tsk'ing of all the sports writers who, rightfully so, might give me a laundry list of reasons why he's deserved some, if not all, of the negative press. But I am in this place where I want to learn from things that are in my global thinking space and I want to learn something from Bode Miller.

I grew up in a small town. Not Twin Peaks small, more like Davenport, IA small. By the early-80's the demographic had started to change, mostly due to the largely agricultural economic base, and the Hispanic population exploded. Many things about that shift shaped who I am today and it started, of course, by a fast lesson from my mother. I have told so many people this story, so if you are one of them, you can stop reading now. If you are still with me, here goes:

One weekend afternoon, driving with my mother, I casually pointed and laughed at the car next to us stopped at the same traffic light. Low-profile Chevy Monte Carlo, maroon in color, spit-shined and gleaming, maroon brushed velvet seats, spotless silver rims, and neatly trimming the interior of the front and rear windows were, what we called then, dingle berries. Those little decorative cotton balls strung from a line of lace, usually found on the bottom of an apron. I was maybe 13. Laughing and thinking that I knew that decorating your car in such a way was open season for you to be mocked. In my memory, my mom reached across the front of me, opened my door and shoved me out of the car. This isn't what happened. I know this because she's too short to really have that kind of reach (we were also in a Monte Carlo with a massive bench front seat), but she did pull the car over to the side of the road and she did give me a piece of her mind and she did make me get out of the car. She will say this didn't happen, but it did. (She will only say it didn't happen because she won't believe she left me on a street corner to teach me a lesson, but I say: Embrace it! You did it! It worked!)

The piece of her mind that I got was incredibly basic. She asked me if I knew why they decorated their car. Of course I didn't, I just knew we were supposed to think it was funny, and it kind of was, wasn't it? All she said was that they decorated the car because they were proud of it. That's how they did things in their culture. Those were their values. If I thought it was so funny, why don't I get out and walk home? Maybe I didn't need the luxury of a car ride if I thought it was so damn funny. Lesson completed and effective: try to understand someone else's point of view. Period.

Yesterday, Bode Miller was feeling good, motivated and went for it. He came up with a medal and is thus considered one of the best in the world. But Bode would have been fine with 4th place because he wasn't living in our heads, he was living in his. We only get to hear his perspective because he got 3rd, but I heard it and learned something from it. However, I can't end this entry by pretending that I am not, on a daily basis, still putting my foot in my mouth, or judging people unfairly, or forgetting how to practice intellectual humility, whatever that is. But I will say that I am trying to be the type of person that remembers what it felt like to be left alone on a street corner with a lesson swirling in my head. I would have appreciated and loved a ride in that decorated car. Period.