Lessons in Humanity and remembering our own. And floors.

Howdy! America here. I’m constantly learning lessons from the people I surround myself with, and I’m going to share a very important one that I learned from Adrian recently.

First though, I need to give a little background on mine and Adrian’s relationship. We met at Heine and I was the shift lead who trained him. On June 2, 2017, Adrian was the first person to ask me in real life what my pronouns were and subsequently make me be honest with myself about the dysphoria I was experiencing day to day. Early in our friendship, before he was “out” to me, someone who used to know him posted old pictures to Facebook and tagged him in them- and he messaged me in a panic to see if I had seen them before they’d been removed. I had, but I’d also assumed he’d given the OK for them to be posted. He had not. One time while working, I ogled over his then girlfriend and how gorgeous she was. He listened to me go on and on about her until she came into the shop and he proudly exclaimed, “America, this is my girlfriend, _____!” I was so damned embarrassed, but he just beamed.  He left to go be an assistant manager at a different location, and honestly, I was certain that that would be the end of our friendship. Making friends as an adult is hard, and keeping work friends when you no longer work together is even harder. I was incorrect. Adrian made sure we kept in touch. Adrian came to my COVID Drive-by baby shower. Adrian let me sleep in his spare bedroom on the pullout sofa two times with my son before I finally decided to leave the abusive relationship I was in. We have keys to each other's places. Adrian is one of my greatest platonic loves. One of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. He is smart and funny and kind, generous, tenacious, determined, and filled with good intentions.

During the course of a few nights, Adrian painted the floor this beautiful gray/purple color we’d all voted on. We all loved it. It looked so cool and slick. Then we started walking on it. There were footprints everywhere. Over the course of this entire process, we’re constantly noting chores we’ll have to take care of, and “sweeping and mopping 35 times a day because we’re all anal and wont be able to handle looking at the prints” was just one we weren’t interested in adding to our growing list. Someone suggested rugs, then someone else rebutted that we’d have to clean under the rugs. We’d have to figure out how to fasten the rugs to the concrete floor. I suggested we splatter paint on the floor with the same colors that are in the bathrooms and what’s on the trim in the cafe to tie it all in. We all agreed. Cricket gets started on the floor, and Adrian comes in and has the wise idea that “the floor should be rainbow!” He suggested it and it got enough votes to change the idea. But there was a problem- Cricket started on yellow. Do you know the order of the colors of the rainbow, friend? I say “ROY-GEE-BIV” (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) to help me remember. I mentioned it because I know my friend and I also knew that once he saw it starting in the wrong order, it’d bother him and he’d get worried and anxious, but he insisted that it would be fine. A few days later, Adrian sends a message in the Discord - he’s displeased with the floor. It’s too busy, it’s going to clash. He wants to go back to the drawing board. 

(I would like to mention that at no point did I ever once say to him, “I told you so.” When he reads this it will be the first time the words are coming from me. Adrian: I told you so, love.)

We held off making any decisions on the floor until the next weekly meeting and then voted to go back to the original alternative. We thought we were in the clear.  Adrian and Cricket dug into painting like they’ve dug into everything else during this process- with absolute determination, gusto, and a terrifying display of tunnel vision. But then… but then friend, there was another problem. Adrian could not get his pattern to look the same as what Cricket and I were doing. He was worried that it wouldn’t match. The idea for the floor required us down on all fours, hand painting the design. Using steel wool. The pattern did not need to be perfect, but like I mentioned before, he is tenacious and determined. He fretted. He asked for tips. He fretted some more. I told him that his portion was fine, but he was stressing us out.  So one night, after a meeting or maybe just a night where the three of us were at the shop and we were talking about the floor and what he else he could try to get his patterns to match ours, I said to him “Why don’t you let me and Cricket finish painting, and then when we’re done, you can come in and seal it?” “You don’t want me to help with the painting?” I responded with an honest “No”, and while he’ll probably not agree,  looking at his face, I knew that I’d hurt his feelings. The issue here was not that we didn’t want him to help. The issue was that artistic things are not his forte, and although he wanted to be helpful, we had already lost about a week on the floor. He agreed and Cricket and I knocked out the rest of the floor between the two of us within about 3-4 days. He loved it. We all love it.  We’re finally done with the floor and have staged everything and the number of compliments we’ve gotten have been very validating. Did I mention that the floor design and execution was my idea?

Did you catch the lesson I learned, though? Some things, you will not be perfect at. Sometimes you will be downright bad at something no matter how much you want to be good. But that doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t make the people who love you do so any less. Sometimes you have to give yourself the grace to accept that you can’t do everything perfectly.  Sometimes, you just have to seal the floor. 

And now, pictures.

the rainbow

the swatch for comparison during the final floor vote

floor finished and furniture staged before inspections