Love or Respect

Love or Respect, which is more important?
Well, to be respectfully loved or lovingly respected works for a sister,
But I am going to have to say,
It depends on where you are, and what you are doing...
One of the most exasperating things to me are those,
Who are looking for love in all the wrong places,
Work being one of those,
When I come to work, my goal is to get it done,
To the best of my abilities,
And to be paid well for my efforts,
If I have a friendship or two, then more the better,
But Love, uh uh…
Which brings to mind one of the biggest compliments ever paid me by one of my students,
Her name was Pleshur,
I will never forget the day I met her,
She was in orientation and attitude brimmed off her like paint fumes,
Immediately I understood,
She appeared to either have a birth defect,
Or she’d had a stroke and the side of her face was twisted,
I was sure she had taken a lot of hits from insensitive people,
I knew my work was cut out for me,
The first few months,
She would only come by as required, mostly to complain,
She didn’t like the dorms or the food and she hated being in the boondocks,
After all she was from the Bronx and we were in Oklahoma on a Wildlife refuge no less,
I allowed her to vent, I needed her to come back,
Sometimes when she wasn’t due to come by, she would peek her head in to get hard candies off my desk,
One day she took it upon herself to tell me, “Ms Angi, everyone seems to think you are all that. But not me, I really don’t even like you.”
Nodding, I simply looked at her,
“You wanna know why?”
‘Only if you want to tell me…”
“Just because I don’t.”
‘Okay…” She got up stalking out, making sure the door rattled.
But,
She didn’t stop coming by and we had many conversations,
Often about her career choices, educational accomplishments...
But many times about how she felt about things,
I will never forget the day she left,
She came by to thank me…she had a couple things she thought,
She would never have, a diploma and was trained to be a medical assistant,
She looked me dead in my eye saying,
“I still don’t really like you and I don’t think you are all that…But…
I do respect you and I thank you…” I swallowed down a lump…
“You wanna know why?’’
‘Only if you want to tell me.’
“Because you always made me do my best and you didn’t care if I liked you or not, you still treated me right….” She sprinted off to catch the bus…
I stood there until I could no longer see the bus, knowing…
In that case RESPECT was better….much better...

Love and Blessings,
Angelia