- by Jim Diorio

Most people will go through their lives never realizing they’re in the presence of an angel.

(This is a little like never stopping to smell the roses, except the roses are people and you actually don’t stop and smell them, because that would be strange. But If you did, I’m betting that they would smell like a delicious mix of cake icing and lavender.)

However, I am not one of those people. Because over the span of 12 hours in Owen Sound, my first ever visit, I was in the presence of not one angel, but three.

The first, on the evening of June 1st, was in the emergency room of the Owen Sound hospital. I was in Owen Sound for business, and had spent the night before at the otherwise excellent Best Western Hotel, where I tried to deal with a rather large and loud air conditioning unit (it must have been originally designed to cool down entire aircraft hangars, then retrofitted for my room) by using ear plugs to sleep. But I don’t do anything half way, and that philosophy applied all too literally to the insertion of my earplugs, which I forced in so hard (readers with sensitive stomachs may wish to click away at this point) that they pushed the icebergs of ear wax (waxbergs?) so deep into my ear canals that, for the first time in my life, I was almost completely deaf.

Temporary deafness is amazing. But only for a minute. Cars glide silently by, as if they’re floating. You ask people to scream at you and they happily oblige. It’s like a dream. But hearing is a precious gift and I wanted mine back, and so did Angel No. 1 — an incredibly devoted young male nurse in the ER. With skill and patience and focus, that kid took more time than my ears deserve to syringe-out waxberg after waxberg like he was removing a live bomb from the head of a world leader. This wasn’t a simple procedure, it was a mission. And when I could finally hear, the first sound I heard was him, going “Yesss!” If that young man is the future of health care in Owen Sound, you people are going to live to 150.

As you can imagine, after my hospital visit I was exhausted. I also hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was almost 10 pm. So I made my way to a restaurant that must go unnamed, because it was where Angel No. 2 works, and she did something that might get her in a little trouble. (No, she didn’t offer to syringe my ears.) I ordered some takeout, and when it came, my young server looked at me, then said, a little shyly, “Was that a hospital bracelet I saw on your wrist?” I laughed and told her yes, I’d had quite a day. She then smiled and handed me my dinner — as well as a giant piece of cake, which I hadn’t ordered. “You looked like you needed something nice,” she said. I was speechless. And I started to think, okay: what’s in the water here? I left smiling and didn’t stop for hours. I also learned how to turn off the aircraft hangar air conditioner in my hotel room and slept like a baby, one with spotless ears.

My third Owen Sound angel is one I never saw. But he or she was definitely there. As I was leaving this now miraculous town the next morning I needed gas, then decided to vacuum out my car. But I had no change for the vacuum, but the unit was supposed to work with a credit card. It didn’t, and I was disappointed. Until I looked at the top of the little metal box where you deposit the money. And there, spread out, as to be clearly noticeable, was a toonie and four quarters. Exactly the cost of the vacuum. I had to look twice, just to make sure my cake-filled and waxless head wasn’t imagining things.

Maybe a customer got a free vacuuming through a glitch in the machine, and wanted to pass on their luck to another person. Or maybe it’s just what you do here in Owen Sound. Maybe, because you’re not hurtling home though eleven lanes of traffic, or working sixty hours a week, or doing whatever else people have to do to survive in a so-called major city, there’s more time to be kind here. But I’ll bet you actually do work sixty hours a week here, yet you still somehow manage to find one minute more for someone else. Including a complete stranger with blocked ears and no change.

Whatever it is, please keep doing it. Because while most people won’t realize that an angel has just graced their presence, some people will. I do. And by seeing your angels, who some people will say aren’t real, I saw the real Owen Sound.

Bless you, angels of Owen Sound. All of you.