Freedom Kerl

Before I visited Pennsylvania, everyone warned me that Philadelphia people are the toughest, most impatient people in America. I believed them until I walked toward the front door of a Wawa gas station. I was still forty feet away in the parking lot, walking between rows of cars. A massive construction worker in steel-toe boots, carrying a twenty-four-ounce coffee in one hand and a paper-wrapped hoagie in the other, pushed open the glass door to leave. Then he saw me. He stopped. He planted his boot against the bottom of the door. And he waited. Forty feet is a very long distance when a grown man is holding a door for you in the wind. In Japan, to make a stranger wait carries great shame. So I broke into that awkward half-jog every man performs when he wishes to show gratitude without looking like he is fleeing a crime. "Go ahead, boss," he said as I passed. Ten minutes later, as I walked out with my own sandwich, I saw an elderly woman locking her car thirty feet away. I planted my foot against the glass. I held the door. Another man behind me held the inner door. Within seconds we had formed an impromptu honor guard of grumpy men holding glass doors in complete silence. Philadelphia may boo Santa Claus. But inside the three-foot radius of a Wawa doorway, they have the manners of the imperial court.

It’s funny how they make tear-free shampoo for kids considering I didn’t start crying in the shower until I was an adult.