• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 472 0

my experience with Shaun. Sure, Derrick was a marvel to watch, carrying a dryer or a recliner or three boxes of books onto the truck at once, packing them in, and then going back for more. And he would literally jog from the truck back into the house to pick up another piece. His style of moving was very remarkable, no doubt, but what struck me most about him was his modesty. Shaun walked and talked like he was something pretty special; Derrick didn’t. He was the best, and he knew he was the best, but he also knew that his work spoke for itself. He didn’t stop to take long breaks, and he surely didn’t slow down after he started. He was friendly to the customer, but he didn’t waste time with idle chitchat as other guys that I had worked with would do.

In fact, he and I didn’t talk much on the job on that day. He didn’t boss me around, and he didn’t explicitly teach me anything. Nothing. I’m not sure if he was sizing me up to see how I worked or if he figured he wouldn’t be working with me again anyway, so why should he bother, but either way, I was anxious all day long. I couldn’t tell if my technique was good or bad, but as the day wore on and the more I saw him working, the less confidence I had in my own feeble moving abilities. At that point, I was more qualified than when I had started at Fast Company, but I was starting to doubt the tactics that Shaun had taught me. Derrick was carrying two pieces to my one, which, even considering both his dominance and my bum toe, was still ridiculous. I couldn’t hang with him, but I still found comfort in the fact that nobody else could either.

Perhaps all of this may seem like it couldn’t have really been that serious, like I’m being dramatic in my description of Derrick. After all, who the hell were we? We were movers! We were nobodies! Most of us had dropped out or barely graduated from high school, and we were destined to be blue-collar workers for the rest of our days. But that’s just it! That’s what was so special about Derrick and several of the other guys that I met at Fast Company and in other areas of Charleston. Nobodies, like Derrick and Mike, were difference makers, legends in their own world. They were providing a service that was so very necessary, and they were very good at what they were doing. There was a huge contrast, in attitude and otherwise, that separated guys like Derrick (who took their job seriously, wanted to excel, and wanted to be proud of what they had accomplished) from the guys who you could tell were coming to work just to make a few bucks to pay their rent. Moving furniture was so much more than that to guys like Derrick and Mike. They were professionals, seasoned veterans who had made sacrifices to put themselves in a position to do things that no one else could do. They were average guys performing above average feats.

But, then again, so were many other people I met along my trip in Charleston and in my life in general. It’s like in the movie Castaway where Tom Hanks’s character returns from being on the island for five years and is in shock at the massive food platters at a party, a lighter, the pocket knife—ordinary things. I was in shock.

And that’s how I felt about the bus driver, too.

I decided that Friday would be the last day of riding the bus, as I planned to car hunt over the weekend. I didn’t know the bus driver on a personal level, nor did I think I would have cared so much about his services, but I did. He was like many other people in my life, but this time I decided to acknowledge him. So I wrote him a note:

Dear Mr. Bus Driver, whose name I don’t know and whose path I will never cross again in my life:

It’s incredible how insignificantly significant guys like you and I are. It’s interesting how in the grand scheme of life, we have the power to wake up and make a difference in the world. Or not. You and me: a regular old bus driver and a regular old mover.

Every day, Monday through Friday, I ride your bus, and every day, Monday through Friday, you get my day started off right. You greet every rider with a smile and a