I headed back to the kitchen, to set up more trays for the rest of the residents. When I heard a soft voice from one of the residents, “can you close my door?” He called from his bed. I acted as if I did not hear him and just kept walking. I did not do it to be rude; I did it because I was shy and was afraid I would make a mistake when I spoke. Back in the kitchen while I was mopping the floor, I told myself I was going to have to learn how to communicate better with not only the residents but with people in general.

This happened at my first job, a local healthcare facility. My job required me to set up resident’s dinner trays, deliver them, and clean all the trays after dinner service.

Whenever I worked I always tried to avoid residents so I did not have to converse with them. I even walked down an extra hall just to evade them. Towards the end of my third week working, I had a shift. Close to the last hour of my shift, when I had to pick up the carts with all the dirty trays, I observed two nurses who were speaking with two different residents. The first nurse, Lauren, who I remembered from orientation, was talking to Mr. Simon. The other nurse, Sarah, who has been working there for at least a decade and a half was talking to Mr. Pierce. I over-heard Lauren, who was wearing white crocs and red scrubs, tell Mr. Simon, who was finishing up his daily crossword puzzle the wrong date. She told him that it was the 6th of August, but really it was the 7th. Then a couple doors down I saw into Mr. Pierce’s room, where he was watching NBC News on, wearing a green Polo shirt, khakis, and black Velcro strapped shoes. I then heard him ask Sarah why the food tasted horrendous. I could sense that she did not know how to respond, so she mumbled something under her breath to break the silence. From my observation I concluded that it is ok to misspeak sometimes, but it is not ok to purposely ignore people because you think they are intimidating or you afraid of saying something wrong.

By the end of my time working at my first job, I made sure to get to work twenty minutes early to be able to talk to Mr. Stangle, about sports. During one of my last shifts, I came in early like I usually did and went to Mr. Stangle’s room, and saw him in his usual attire, which included; a vintage Red Sox snapback hat, a broken in Ted Williams t-shirt, faded blue sweatpants, and tan colored slippers. He was lying in his bed and had a wooden chair right next to it for me to sit in. That day I brought him a ticket to a Red Sox game that I was going to go to the next week. When I showed the ticket to him, his eyes got big and he started to smile. I was enjoying talking to him about his experiences at Fenway Park so much that when I actually made it to the kitchen, I was twenty minutes late.

The next school year after that summer, my English teacher asked the class, “how was your summer?” and “did you do anything fun or exciting?” In my previous years, those same questions were always asked by our teachers and normally I never raised my hand to tell. I always relied on another student to give their summary of their summer. But, this year was different; I was the first to raise my hand to share the experiences I had.