Friends '09 - Composition - Assignment 1 - Personal Narrative Rough Draft

The meaning of ‘hero’ has many interpretations. When I think of the boldness of super heroes, their gravitas, their nobility, it is difficult to contrast these idols of everyday life against what being a hero can mean. Some acts of simple assistance can mean the world to some people, where one man’s illustrated hero can stop a speeding bullet, another person’s hero can simply take a moment to help someone who’s confidence is low. I want to tell you what it felt like to be a hero, but for a minute, in the eyes and heart of a woman I once and never knew.

I’ve single-handedly stopped a car from blowing up on the side of a highway (True story; just ask the firefighter who called me an idiot for my efforts). I’ve rescued a young distressed swimmer from a city pool. I’ve given someone a meal to eat when they had nothing. I’ve always tried to do what I could to make a major mark in someone else’s life; to be remembered for the good, the right. I would have to say, with an bit of honesty, I’ve always enjoyed helping others, to being needed, and the recognition I would receive for those efforts (even if it was negative reinforcement, e.g. the fireman) Those things and more, though, do not compare to a single moment I had at work a few months back.

I work in a call center for a local cable company. My job is, to me, a menial one. I am tasked to assist the unfamiliar with setup, configuration, and on-going support of their video, data, and telephone services through this provider. In any given day, I could speak to anywhere from thirty to seventy people on the phone. I assist each person with their bill, their inability to check their email, their inadvertent triple-x rated show they accidently ordered four nights in a row and want to have expunged from their account before their significant other sees the bill or they are going to sue our company. Essentially, the usual call center fare. My calls are quick; meaningless in the greater scheme of things. These personal connections I make with the customers are warm, touching, heart-felt, and fleeting. I’ve become your best friend, your good buddy, your charming and caring other man for the five to forty-five minutes I am on the line, and then I am gone as fast as I entered their lives and fixed their pay-per-view television. I have no misgivings to this; it is the nature of the job, and I understand these relationships are fleeting.

There are the few moments in time when an interaction occurs and your life is different forever because of it. While I cannot tell you the date or time, the moment is forever burned into my person. I can describe it with great detail because I was caught off-guard by it, torn away from my interpersonal professional distance I keep, and pulled into this woman’s world for a second. She helped reinvigorate my sense of worth and value to my job with a few simple words. This all began with a simple cable snowiness issue and turned into a story I try to tell my coworkers when they lose their sense of importance at work.

The woman called in and I answered, as per the usual process. I wish I could remember her name, or have written it down somewhere. Alas, her name is lost to the winds of time, but the memory of her is forever. She called about having a snowy picture on every channel above channel 26. I inspected her account, and the information about her area. Everything checked out; she had no outages to mention and her account was in good standing. I checked over the services she had, and found there to be nothing terribly complicated about her cable services. In my mind, I had decided already that this call was going to be quite simple.

After a few questions about the nature of her troubles, I asked her if she felt comfortable checking some connections behind her television. This is a standard practice when someone reports fuzziness on analog cable stations. Her reply was heavy with hesitation and apprehension:

“Well, I’m not sure. My husband passed away recently, and he usually does this type of stuff.”

I encouraged her, stating that this would be a very easy fix; either there was a loose cable in the back of her television, or we would need to send a technician to her home and investigate further. I could hear some apprehension in her voice as she said “Wait a minute,” and readjusted to get behind the television.

“Ok, what am I looking for?” she asked.

“What you are looking for is the coaxial cable that screws onto the television and then connects back to the wall.”

“I see it.”

“What I need you to do is remove this cable from both the wall and the television, then reconnect it back. We want to make sure we have a flush connection at both connectors.”

“Ok, let me put the telephone down and do this.” I heard some rustling about and movement on the other end. This went on for about a minute. She picked up the phone. “OK, did that.”

“All right, now let’s look at the television and see if that fixed it.”

And then something I’ll never forget happened. She acknowledged me, and I heard some movement, as though she was getting up off the floor. She presumably moved in front of the TV, and then… started crying.

“Oh my God, I fixed it…”

I was taken a bit back at the tears, but I was encouraged her with a simple “I take it it is working?”

Her crying was rising at a frenetic pace, to almost sobbing. “Was that really it? You didn’t do anything to it?”

I wasn’t sure where she was going with this. “No ma’am, it was all you. I just told you what to look at.”

“No one’s going to believe me. “

“Excuse me ma’am?”

“No, you don’t understand. I’m seventy eight years old. I haven’t been able to fix anything around here since my husband died.”

The tears she was crying were not those of sadness, but more the tears a player cries when they’ve scored the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl; those tears at graduation, those tears of celebration. She exclaimed that no one at her place of employment would believe her and to be sure to document this as proof she did it. I gladly did so, and was moved to tears myself. I had to hold back choking up myself while I documented her account and wrapped up the details.

After the call was over, I was so taken aback by that call I had to step out on a personal unscheduled break and take a breather. To say I was choked up didn’t adequately capture the welling tears in my eyes. I can only assume, in that revelatory moment that I may never fully grasp, she was enlightened. She was newly capable. She found a power she didn’t know she had. Her world changed pivotally and I was witness to the moment. All because of some loose RG-6 Coaxial cable.

That moment may live on in her mind, it may have been forgotten a week later, I do not know. I do know, however, that even though the call ended, I was changed. My view of the world was just that much kinder because of her. I had a renewed sense of purpose that day that still lingers when I am frustrated with my employment. Everyone should be so lucky.