Do you need a spoon?

I was making my way past a crowded beverage station in the Commons last week when I heard something go cascading to the floor, like someone had dropped a pair of cymbals in the band room. It was not a tray filled with plates of food, but an entire container of clean spoons that metallically sprayed everywhere, dancing on the linoleum floor in a congested area of Middle and Upper School students filling soup bowls, grabbing silverware, and looking for tables. The culprit was not a student – nor even a teacher. It was one of our custodians. We actually outsource our custodial work at Berwick, so this person was not technically even a Berwick employee.

As I looked for a place to put my tray to help out the rapidly blushing victim, little bodies dropped to the floor everywhere. I have to say that the vast majority of the kids in this case were Middle Schoolers – probably from grades five and six. It reminded me that I had worked in a number of other of independent schools (schools that I also loved), where the norm was that everyone applauded when a tray went crashing down. Not so much on the Hilltop. People stop what they are doing and try to help. It is probably one of the more visible moments of empathy I get to observe on a weekly basis: truly putting oneself in someone else’s shoes.

Our custodian, let’s call him Rick, was clearly moved. His beet red face had been replaced with an almost sentimental smile. The kids had mostly gone back about their business, and I was picking my tray (jammed with three plates as per usual) up to turn my attention to the pressing business of eating. Even Rick seemed to be back to normal, turning his attention to where he might sit. As he took his first step towards the salad bar, I watched as one of the girls who had helped him did a 180 and came back toward the silverware dispensary. With a smile, she reached into a newly cleaned container. Before Rick could get very far she made eye contact and asked him a simple question that says it all:

Um - do you need a spoon?

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