the parts girl at the cycle shop

One of the joys of doing any kind of work on your own motorcycle is walking past the motorcycle sales people at the dealership and entering the parts department. No matter how trivial the part, no matter how little motorcycle understanding it takes to install the part, one receives a wonderful air of salt and savy to slide onto a chair at the counter in parts and ask for what you need.

In the cycle shop I go to there are a couple of guys who work the counter, maybe three, but my favorite is the girl. She seems to be in her early twenties, has a comfortable familiarity with computerized motorcycle schematics and has a charming friendliness. She is cute, in the way that you would say your daughter is cute, and probably has the required extra earrings and piercings that so many have today. But these are not her best features.

I hasten to add here that I don't want to date her and she is not in my dreams. I'm happily married and besides, "sometimes you need an old man" but nobody ever wants a dirty old man. Here is what I like. She treats me like a person. She, a young person, doesn't treat me like an old person. She doesn't treat me like just another boring customer, or just another nickel earned for the store, or just another needy motorcyclist who wants his parts yesterday or sooner if possible. She listens to what I say and gives real answers, not the standard things that some sales people parrot back to customers.

I heard years ago that old people love it when young people pay attention to them. I'm not that old but I'm beginning to see the truth of that statement. I wonder, do young people like it when old people pay attention to them. I think so, especially if there doesn't happen to be any other young people around at the moment. But mostly I think we all like it when someone treats us as a person no matter what age we happen to be. Please understand, I think we want to be treated like an individual person, not as a young person, not as an old person, not a stereotypical this or that, not an object or a demographic, but an individual.

I wonder if the parts girl gets any comments like, "Woa, what's a girl doing working in a motorcycle parts department?" What, girls can't use a computer and have a grasp of an inventory?

Dorothy Sayers was a great author back in the thirties and forties and on one occasion she gave a speech entitled "Are Women Human?" There are a lot of good statements in that speech but I'll just give this one, "What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person."

And if I'm going to practice what I'm preaching I need to stop calling my friend "the parts girl." That is probably somewhat condescending. She is just a nice person at the cycle shop who treats me right and helps me gets the parts I need.