Marine Mike

On Christmas Eve I took my car in for an oil change and checkup. This was my first routine service visit with the new/used Hyundai Sonata Hybrid. The dealership is new and remodeling the physical plant from top to bottom. Up to now customers were not sure where to find the sales room let alone the service department. Everything was being rebuilt and redesigned. Because the car is a hybrid I have been careful to follow instructions and have the car serviced at the dealership.

Patterned after a Mercedes shop my Hyundai dealer is something unexpected. Each employee seems trained to focus on the customer. That’s easy to say but difficult to pull off. Somehow they do, even in a construction zone. The customer experience is very good. Personal. Confident and professional. It certainly doesn’t feel like a GM or Chrysler shop. It is even better than a Ford dealership.

At any rate I was received in a large, brightly lit service reception area, one staff checked me in, another led me to a private office with glass walls clearly in view of my car. The services were ordered in full, and then I was led to a large waiting lounge with countless TVs, two computer lounges with several computers set up for use or portals for plugging in your own laptop.

That’s where I met Mike the Marine. Talkative. Friendly. Easily engaged. He soon shared he was 65 years old and nearing his 66^th. He was retired from the Marines, and from a secondary career as well. Clearly he identified with being a Marine and loved it. His secondary career was with the county Sheriff’s Department where he had served as a deputy. Now he was living in a retirement community and very clearly bored.

His opening statement to me was, “I could use some sun right about now.” Not an odd introduction if you’ve lived in Illinois for several winters! Sun is often absent for weeks on end. Unless it is very cold, the sun is absent and the nights long.

Recent weather has been cloudy, cool and wet. Not a lot of rain but much fog, drizzle and light rain. Clouds have socked us in since Thanksgiving. A spare snowflake or two flit from time to time but didn’t make it to the ground in one piece.

As I write this it is early Christmas morning. 3:30 am. I awoke after 5 hours of sleep or so. Bored and awaiting family festivities that will consume the day. Fun times are just ahead. We will have just enough time between two major engagements for a nap and regeneration to finish the day. It should be a fun day but it will be tiring for two old goats.

When I awoke I recalled my conversation with Mike the Marine. We spent 80 minutes waiting for our cars to be serviced. In that time we chatted about a lot of subjects. In that short time I got a pretty good view of Mike’s life and where it is going. He is bored. Very. He has a part time job to get him out of the house a bit, earning some money and interacting with people. Otherwise he is home. Doesn’t trust the internet or email so avoids it. Relies on letters and phone calls to keep in touch with others in his life. He reads some. Maybe a lot. We didn’t touch on that but he still watches TV, movies and some newscasts.

We both expressed doubt about news shows and their credibility, factual base, and lack of bias. He distrusts the internet and doesn’t get most of his news from those sources as I do. I’ve learned to shop my sources to feed my confidence that they are reliable and open minded. Mike doesn’t trust doing that for himself. In fact Mike has difficulty trusting much of anything but the Marines and the US Military.

We spoke of careers and satisfaction with them. He loved being in the Marines. He had good times and exciting ones. I’m sure he also had tedious times as well but he was very satisfied with his military career. He misses it. He seems rootless without it.

All we talked about was getting back to the sun. His military stations were mostly in southern climes of the US --  California, San Diego, also Georgia and South Carolina. So unlike Illinois. Without the Marines Mike seemed distrustful of government. I thought this odd given the military is solely dependent on and a part of government.

He seems to trust private enterprise and wishes government to stay out of the way of businesses. Yet he is highly uncomfortable with the direction of the nation and of the state. We spoke of the need of intelligent partnership between private and public entities if good things are expected to happen. This intrigued him enough to consider getting involved somehow.

As our cars were readied for delivery, he quickly grabbed a business card and gave it to me with the off chance that we might connect again in the future. I was left with the impression that I had something in my life that he needed or wanted. Not sure what that something is but I suspect it is purpose.

Mike appears to be a man who liked doing what he did with the Marines and the Sheriff’s Department. But now he is not doing much of anything. Just keeping busy and not enough of that. At 65 he is at the beginning of a new chapter of life. He doesn’t want it to be a drawing down to the final chapter but more exciting and life giving than that.

Who knows? We might re-connect. I wonder if it will be for Mike or feeding my own curiosity of potential. I’ll let you know if something happens.

December 29, 2014