Being One of Them

I think it began when I stepped into the elevator that would take me to the third floor of the building that houses the local water company.

‘Good morning,’ said I to the elevator man.

‘A fine morning,’ said he to me.

The thought crossed my mind that it was a pity he had to spend this fine morning in a sunless elevator-shaft, but all I said was, ‘Yes, indeed it is! Third, please.’

I entered the office and handed my bill and my check under the wicket to the clerk. He quickly dispatched the business — Dub! dub! the rubber stamp banged on the bill, and on the coupon, my receipt was handed to me, and forth I went. There at the open elevatordoor was the man waiting for me.

‘How did you know I’d be out at once?’ I asked.

‘It don’t take long to pay a waterbill,’ he answered.

Of course, the water company’s office is not the only one on the third floor of that building, but I passed lightly by the obvious question how he knew where I was going, and said instead, ‘There must be a good many people paying their water-bills.’

With zest he answered, ‘Many! I should say there was! They was comin’ and goin’ all day yesterday. And last night, too, till near nine o’clock. Lord, I was tired!’

And with that we parted on the ground floor, and I went on my way, considering. For a day or so at the beginning of each month, do all people lose individuality in that man’s eye? Short or tall, light or dark, thick or thin, Gentile or Jew, are we all only ‘ they ’ to him? people going up with unpaid bills in their hands, people coming down pocketing their receipts? payers of water-rates ?

I met my child’s dancing teacher. My child, in my opinion, will some day out-Russian the Russians. At present, fat three-year-old legs end rather abruptly in wee feet encased in the smallest known dancing-slippers; but the pirouettings and pointings of my prodigy promise well. I stopped to speak to the teacher. She is nice. I like her. She has individuality in my mind. But in the course of the conversation she said something about ‘ the mothers, and I at once knew I had no individuality in her mind. Even detached, in the spring sunshine, on a down-town street, I am still only one of ‘ them ’ — one of that long row of fondly beaming females who sit against the wall on Thursday afternoons. To me they are individuals — Stephen’s mother, fairhaired like her boy; Alice’s mother, with Alice’s same smile; perhaps they are individuals to Stephen’s and Alice’s teacher, but she called them ‘ the mothers.’

I left her and climbed the steps to a dry-cleaning establishment on the second floor of an old building. There I was greeted by the proprietress, a business woman of tact with whom I have had many an interview, both face to face and over the telephone. These interviews, though entirely on business matters, have always left a pleasant impression, a flavor of personality. To-day’s was like preceding interviews. I was greeted with a personal smile. We conferred earnestly together about my husband’s fur-lined coat. I asked if it could be returned to me in a sealed package, so that I’d not have to bear the responsibility if moths ate the coat.

‘ Boxes are high and hard to get, and so we are n’t sending anything home sealed this year,’ said my dry-cleaning friend. ‘They used to always expect it, but I guess they’ll have to realize it’s impossible, now.’

‘They’ expected? Who expected? moths? fur-linings? boxes? Oh, yes! of course ! Customers. I was one of ‘ them ’ to her. I was merely a human being who stored up my goods where moth and dust corrupt. I was a soldier in that vast army that wages war on dirt, with no more individuality in the drycleaner’s eye than has one khaki-clad soldier in the parade to the citizen looking from a high window. It was growing amusing.

I left the cleaner’s. I stepped into the street-car at the corner. We’ve recently adopted that thorn in the flesh, the sixcent fare, in our town. I fished in my purse. The exact change was n’t there. I searched further. No pennies! I handed the conductor a ten-cent piece, and when he doled back my four pennies, I said something entirely pleasant, though it sounded a little like ‘nuisance!’ His reply was, ‘They all hate a six-cent fare.’

‘ They ’ again! This time I was one of the traveling public. What I meant to that conductor was a person, one of hundreds who pass under his observation every day, who, like the others, hated a six-cent fare. Only that and nothing more. To him I was n’t a payer of water-rates, or the mother of an aspirant for terpsichorean fame, or even a slayer of moths.

As I wrote the above, my next-door neighbor came to borrow something for private theatricals. (We still have private theatricals in our town, despite peace conferences and the spread of Bolshevism.)

‘I wonder if you’d lend me one of your linen collars?’ said my neighbor. ‘Helen is to take a man’s part and wants a linen collar, and her throat is so slender none of our husbands’ collars will fit. I tried to think who wore linen collars, and you were the only woman I could think of who still does.’

Aha! At last I have achieved individualism, if only of an Arrow Brand. I had seen myself as others saw me — one of ‘them,’ but now I was in a different position, dragged there, so to speak, by the collar.