The first Karen I remember meeting was male.
Uh, Mike. Kids read this …
Probably not as many as I would wish or you would fear, but this isn’t anything you need to warn Gov. DeSantis about. I have known very few actual Karens in my life. Oddly enough, the only one that comes to mind was in 1991, when I nearly acquired a 12-year-old stepdaughter named Karen a year before I actually did acquire a 12-year-old stepdaughter named Pauline.
But the Karen I mentioned a few paragraphs ago certainly wasn’t named Karen.
No, the man I met in a San Antonio Best Buy in the summer of 2010 was the first time I saw what we now call Karens — people who constantly complain in stores and ask to see the manager.
I was second in line at a checkout stand, and the guy in front of me — the Karen — was furious with the young guy who was operating the cash register. For some reason, the machine wasn’t working the way it should and the Karen was damned angry.
The young guy was doing his best to be nice, but the Karen wasn’t giving an inch. When the register finally worked, the Karen paid and left without even a thank you.
I stepped up to the register, and the clerk asked me if I could wait a minute while he collected himself. I told him I was in no hurry at all, and then I started talking to him.
I was at the beginning of an amazing summer, and I was making a sincere effort to have a positive effect on at least one person’s life each day. So as he gathered his wits, I told him I had seen the exchange and that he hadn’t done anything wrong. It was obvious to me the guy had been a jerk and had been looking for a fight.
“This is my first day of work here,” he said.
He had been excited about his new job, but after that first customer he was frightened that he wouldn’t be able to do the job well. There was no one else in line behind me, so I had a little bit of time to reassure him.
“You’re always going to come across bad people,” I said. “All you can do is not allow them to make you be a bad person. Just be sure you can be proud of yourself.”
When I told him that, he smiled and thanked me. I was thrilled to see I had really made a difference in his life, even if it turned out just to be a fleeting effect.
It was one Karen who had failed, even if he didn’t know it.