Don’t Judge Me

Welcome to the 4th week of BlogFest 2012.  Today’s writing prompt is brought to us from Paula at Paula Martin-Romance Writer.  Thank you Paula for the great prompt!!

     I don’t think I have ever judged a book by its cover.   I have always read the brief summery inside the book jacket or on the back cover to decide if I would find the book worth reading.  If the book happens to have the added bonus of being penned by an already favorite author, I don’t care what the cover looks like.  I am going to read that book.  Even when selecting books for my kids I delve a little deeper into the story book than the cover.  I flip through the pages and look at the illustrations to see if they are engaging.  

       Ever since an encounter in my early twenties I treat people the same way.  I never judge them by their outward appearances anymore.  I wait to see what kind of person they are first.  When I was 24 my mother went three times a week to dialysis.  She would spend 4 hours on the machine at a time surrounded by the same group of people.  After a while, it was hard not to get to know people after seeing them so much.  I remember this one man who was brought in from a nursing home.  He was half blind and both his legs had been amputated.  To look at him, you would have thought he had always been that way and never had much of a life.  You couldn’t help but feel sorry for him; he was such a sad lonely figure.

       I made a habit of saying hello to all the patients and decided one day to go over and say hello to him and see how he was doing.  He told me that because he failed to keep his diabetes under control he had to have his legs amputated and had all but lost his sight.  His kidneys were shot which is what brought him to dialysis.  Before he got sick he led a very interesting life.  He drew maps for a living and had the pleasure of drawing the official maps for the Calgary Olympic Winter games of 1988.  He had went to the games and been an integral part of them at the time.  Who would have thought the man who looked half dead most of the time could turn into such a fascinating person?  From that day on, he came to life when I walked into the dialysis center and I always made a point to visit with him when I made my rounds.  We became fast friends.  He went from sleeping most of the time he was there looking lost and alone to talking animatedly about his past adventures and laughing right out loud.

       The best things in life aren’t always in plain view.   It really doesn’t matter what people or books look like.  You must approach every one and thing with an open mind and explore the possibilities within before you can have any hope of making a fair judgment.  What matters is what lies hidden within until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.