Dog vs. Man

I enter a nice apartment building for the very first time and there are six mailboxes on the west wall.  This is the fanciest apartment building I have delivered in and I immediately wonder about the people who live here. The six mailboxes are all opened with one skeleton key, but when I put my key in, the left side is jammed.  I stay calm and try again.  And again.  And again.  And pretty soon I'm not so calm.  I hit the mailboxes multiple times and then pull as hard as I can over and over, making quite a racket.  In the middle of it all, a door at the top of the stairs opens and an old man pops his head out to look at me.  I figure I've upset him, but instead he just laughs wildly.  I ask him, "Does this happen often?" and he tells me, "Never, actually."  He climbs down the stairs in his bare feet and says, "Let me try.  I'm an expert."  I ask, "An expert locksmith?"  And he whispers, "No, I used to be a mailman."  He takes the key and I figure that of course, the mailboxes will open up with no problem now, leaving me to look unable to handle my own job, but...nope.  He hit the mailboxes multiple times and tried pulling them open in exactly the same fashion as I did, which made me laugh, but eventually, he was able to shimmy the boxes open.  He looks at me and says, "See?  An expert!"  

As I deliver the mail, he climbs back up the steps.  He sits down, crosses his left leg over his right, then leans back onto his hands and begins small talk.  We chat up quite the storm and as I begin toward the door, he tells me, "You're going the wrong way."  He's right.  I tell him that he's the most helpful person that I've run into on this day and thank him.  He makes me promise that next time I deliver there, I must either knock on his door and announce my arrival, or at least make a huge racket with the mailboxes again.  

I was in the apartment building for less than five minutes, but it completely made up for the six hours of confusion and frustration that I endured before walking in there.  It's amazing how people can do that...just flip my mood around by doing nothing less than acknowledging my existence...well, and fixing all of my immediate problems and making me laugh.  This is pretty much the exact opposite of what I felt three blocks earlier when a dog tied to a swing set was able to move the swing set all the way across the yard in an effort to maul me.  (Though I am thankful that he was tied up with a durable chain instead of something he could easily break).  

Tomorrow is a new day!