Meet Shawn Beveridge. He’s a young crane operator in Ohio, and operating several dozen tons of steel is what he does for a living. Construction cranes are oddly gorgeous pieces of engineering.

Something about a giant, metal arm reaching into the sky and lifting tons and tons of stuff would make anyone’s eyes widen.

The industrial crane’s titanic stature and role in construction has made it pretty iconic, as far as vehicles and machinery go. Every little boy had a toy of one of these. Even LEGO has released a crane set for the engineering-savvy kids and collectors.

No doubt, Shawn’s day job is probably the coolest thing ever to a lot of people. Not just little kids either.

While Shawn works at the job site, operating the crane, an old man from a nearby nursing home always comes out to watch. The man’s name was Harold, but Shawn didn’t know this yet.

The man would always come out at 7 AM, and watch Shawn and the others work at the site. He’d go for lunch whenever they did, and then he’d get up and leave whenever they were finished for the day.

Clearly, he wanted to see everything going on. The question is, “Why?”

Shawn eventually couldn’t fight his curiosity anymore. His otherwise average workdays behind a crane aren’t so average anymore. He’s got something of a regular audience now – and a very small one at that.

Eventually, he mustered up the drive to ask the man, who introduced himself as Harold, why he always came out to watch Shawn at the job site. This led to about 2 and a half hours worth of conversation with Harold.

Shawn learned a lot about the man, and not all of it was too happy.

Harold wasn’t expected to live much longer. The valves of his heart are clogged, and he had a disease that was slowly eating away at his life (though Shawn couldn’t learn the name of). He had 2 daughters a son, but hadn’t seen them in the 7 years that he’s been at the nursing home.

Before disease and misfortune befell Harold, he was once a crane operator himself. Now it all made sense. He came here to watch Shawn, so he could relieve and reminisce about his old life.

Shawn couldn’t just let Harold be all by himself in his last few years, so he made a deal with Harold.

“He originally wanted to be put on payroll (laughing emoji) as I explained to him that wasn’t possible I quickly came to what I thought was a fair agreement. Our deal is this, Harold ran cranes for over 50 years and no matter how good you think you are at something there’s always more to learn. So I told Harold every day after work I’ll sit with him for a little bit so he can critique me and judge me on how I did for that day (give him something to talk about that he enjoys) while I also get to learn from him and In return I would bring him a black coffee every morning for as long as I’m here and buy him lunch twice a week from wherever he chooses.”

Ecstatic, Harold hardly wasted a second as he replied “Absolutely!” Shawn’s little proposition made Harold’s days a whole lot brighter – something both of them direly wanted.

Shawn remarks that he couldn’t believe this relationship with a stranger all started with a simple conversation.

Now, thanks to that conversation, Harold can live out the rest of his days happily. Shawn, on the other hand, can work with a smile on his face knowing that he did something incredible for this stranger-turned-friend.

Makes me wonder how many strong-tie friendships are waiting to be made, all with a simple “Hello, who are you?”. Take Shawn and Harold’s story to heart by reading it below, and don’t hesitate to go out and make new friends. Please give this article a nice share too!or-g

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Source: Shawn Beveridge on Facebook