Wednesday, November 29, 2006

A tragedy turned around..

A few years ago, I made a service call to a school to fix the computer system. The head girl of the school was assigned to me for the day as she knew about the problems and was seen to be the best to give me a run down on what had been not working as it should. She was a tallish girl, long wavy hair, and looked good. I saw that she had a scar on her face, quite noticeable up close, and throughout the morning, she kept her face turned away from me so as not to let it show. Come lunchtime, she offered to bring me something to eat, and I asked if she would join me. She agreed.

We chatted generally for a few minutes, and then I decided to ask if she had a boyfriend, at which point she almost looked up at me, but told me 'no' and turned away again. It was really quite tragic that she acted this way, because the scar was not so bad. For sure it was obvious, but almost cute in its way. Sure enough, the reason she gave for her plight was the scar on her face, that it had always bothered her, left her feeling inadequate in some way. I asked her to look at me directly, and I told her that she was one of the prettiest girls I had seen. For the rest of the day, she did seem to gain more confidence, and by the time the work was finished, she actually looked up and smiled at me.

When the next service call came, I was not available, being busy with another client. The day after the call, the colleague of mine (a dashing hot-out-of-university graduate) who had been in attendance could do nothing but talk about the girl. He even told me that he had asked her for a date and was a little upset because she turned him down. She told him that she had a boyfriend and was very happy with her choice. I never returned to the school, so never met up with her again, but I would like to think that I averted two tragedies that day.

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