Cain and Abel; Caf-Pow; and Lunch Ladies

 Cain and Abel; Caf-Pow; and Lunch Ladies

By Bobby Neal Winters

Human beings are incredibly strange.

I could just leave that first sentence there and never write anything truer.  It’s right up there with two plus two equals four.  But let me expand a bit.

Last week I mentioned the story of Cain and Abel.  Cain’s sacrifice was not accepted and it hurt his feelings.  He was jealous of Abel and you know the result of that.  Before everything went to pot, God told Cain not to worry about what anyone else was doing: Do better yourself, and that will be recognized.

We have a need to be recognized.

Eleven years ago, when I was still getting my feet wet in administration, I did something to ease tension in a particular situation and, as a result of this, I was given a “Caf-Pow.”  For those of you who don’t know, Caf-Pow is a fictional energy drink on the TV series NCIS that Gibbs gives to Abbie for a job well done.  As this is fictional, the Caf-Pow cup given me was handmade. It even came with a Pepsi.  It was a seemingly small thing, but I still have the cup.

Symbols of recognition are important.

This next bit is more complicated.  We human beings have some system of hierarchy that works on an unconscious level.  It is far from transparent.  I remember a story from forty years ago about a football player at my Alma Mater who let himself into a place in the cafeteria that had been roped off.  This was a big guy; a big man on campus; he eventually went on to play for the New York Jets.  A little lunch lady who barely came up to his belly-button read him the riot act and he moved back into the part of the cafeteria that was not roped off all the time apologizing, “Yes, ma’am. I am sorry ma’am.”

We have this invisible hierarchical structure that we all fit into, and sometimes, especially if you try to be modest and humble, it is hard to know where you fit into it.  Sometimes they hand out titles to help with this, but again, if you seek to be modest and humble, it is hard to recognize that you have status in the hierarchy.

I’ve spent some space explaining this, because I’m trying to get a handle on it myself.  The point is that if you are “higher in the hierarchy” people will count what you say more heavily than they would otherwise.  Your praises will raise them higher; your criticisms will take them lower.

If you are a person who still sees himself as a little Okie boy playing in the dirt, it can be kind of hard to get your head around, but there it is.

This tells me if we are to try to do better--even if we seek to be modest and humble--we need to have some knowledge of our place in this invisible hierarchy.  Our words can hurt; our words can heal; we must be aware.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )