THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

At Birth Everyone is a Stranger............................3Kindness of a Job You Love.................................5Behind the Scenes..........................................9Kindness of Being Saved....................................11Behind the Scenes..........................................13Kindness of Loving Yourself................................15Behind the Scenes..........................................17Kindness of My Spiritual Mother............................19Behind the Scenes..........................................23Kindness of the Best Strangers of All......................25Behind the Scenes..........................................31The Stroke 2005............................................33The Trip...................................................37Behind the Scenes..........................................39The Man I was..............................................41The New Job................................................43Behind the Scenes..........................................45My Thinking Process........................................47Behind the Scenes..........................................49My First Day...............................................51Behind the Scenes..........................................53Loading My Car.............................................55Behind the Scenes..........................................57The Great Orange Juice Explosion...........................59Behind the Scenes..........................................61The Kindness of Neighbors The Flood........................63Behind the Scenes..........................................67The Kindness of Looking for a Wife.........................69Behind the Scenes..........................................73The Kindness of God and my Angels..........................75Behind the Scenes..........................................77Behind the Scenes..........................................79The Man I Became...........................................81The future is you, I Still Want a Wife.....................85Poetry Corner..............................................87Contributors Page..........................................99

Chapter One

I think before we are born we sit down with God and talk about the parents we will have and the life we are signing up for.

At birth we know God but everyone else is a stranger. So everyone I talk about in this book is someone who begins as a stranger and then becomes a treasure in my heart.

Family Background

I come from a family of teachers: Father, Mother, both sisters, and even I taught at one point in time. I asked my sister Sue to edit this manuscript. She was kind enough to do it and I am grateful she did. I tell this story to illustrate a point. I was hitchhiking back from college one weekend. A car stopped to pick me up, asked me where I was going and I told him Winchester, Virginia. He said, "Me too." I got in the car. He said my name is Charlie Dick; what is your name? I told him Paul Sybert. He asked me if I was Mousey Sybert's boy. I said I don't know who is Mousey Sybert.

I never called my father Mousey. My father reminded me more of a Wyatt Earp than a Mousey.

Then it dawned on me that Charlie Dick was Patsy Kline's husband. We were all from Winchester, Virginia. She had died a year or two before. He began to tell me a lot of stories about Patsy and Johnny Cash and others on the road that she worked with. When he took me home, he gave me a Patsy Cline album and proceeded to show me his pearl handled pistols.

There was a lot of tension in our family of teachers. Sometimes at the dinner table I would say something that was incorrect either in grammar or by using a wrong word like "ain't". Then listen to the conversation that ensued just to cut the tension.

I tell this story about Charlie Dick for a reason. He saw my father as Mousey Sybert. I saw him differently. To me he was someone I should fear; to me he was the Sheriff, Wyatt Earp. There were three children in our family.

Sheriff Mousey Sybert Deputy mother, wait until your father gets home The Hero, my older sister, also the editor The lost child, the author of this book The mascot, the cute one

The sad part is that as we grow up and get older we meet more strangers and treasure them in our hearts. But the older we get we think of God more like a stranger. We have to make an effort to decide where God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and our Angels fit in our lives. When we do they are no longer strangers.

Chapter Two

It took a while to find the job I love. I had to experiment, try other jobs, go back to school. After getting my degree in electrical engineering, I did a year of pre-med. This involved biology, organic chemistry, qualitative analysis. After pre med courses I realized I did not want medicine. So I turned to business programming. Bingo, I liked this stuff. Cobol programming, finance, accounting, money and banking, 30 some hours of business courses. This went well with my engineering degree. Companies like it when engineers can do business also.

Before I got my first programming job, I was an electrician and going to school at night taking software courses at night, burning the candle at both ends. I was dead tired. I was driving the electron truck and my partner asked me to stop so he could speak with someone he saw, so I did. While I was stopped, I feel asleep briefly and saw two numbers separated by a comma: 31 and 55. When I awoke I was aware that that these numbers were ages. Though I did not know what they meant, on my next birthday I would be 31. I was very tired and was asking for a sign from God when I would get the job for programming. A few months later on my birthday, I became 31. I no sooner became 31 that I got a my first programming job. I stayed there until I was 55 years of age. This was a wonderful sign to me. I thanked God and cried thankfully for His love.

So then I needed to convince a manager to hire me as a programmer. I then began the task of interviewing. I finally got a job as a programmer analyst. I stayed there for 25 years. These strangers became family after this long.

To work in the same locality is really best; you get paid, live in that town, don't travel - Low cost. Later I got job as a contract programmer analyst. That paid a bit more but the job was costly. I had to travel, stay in another town maybe another state, fly or drive there. Life on the road is expensive. There were a lot more strangers. God made some really good people. They were not all good, but many were. So I focused on the good and meditated and prayed every day. This made it a bit more sane and manageable. I found before a spiritual person goes out into the business world each he or she has to pray.

I want to go back to the job I had for nearly 25 years. I learned a lot here. Also it was rewarding. I got up each day for 25 years looking forward to going to work. When I worked as a engineer I did not like it or look forward to work. It was just the opposite; I hated going to work. So I changed jobs and career directions.

Here in this job I worked with more people. I wrote software that my customers wanted. We called these customers users. They called the shots. We made them happy. We made their jobs easier. We got into every area of the company: engineering,...