|
Chapter two: In which I make some
new friends By John Fladd HippoPress.com There is an old joke in which two anthropologists are discussing a tribe that lives in the South Pacific. The older of the two is explaining to his colleague that this particular group of islanders is well known for their skill in traditional herbal medicine. "In fact," he explains, "they are even able to use palm fronds to cure constipation. They roll them up tightly and use them as suppositories." "My God!" says the younger man. "Does that work?" "Hey," his colleague replies. "With fronds like these, who needs enemas?" All of which is a way of making the not-so-terribly-profound point that we all need friends. As part of establishing myself in my new life, I find that I need to make some new friends. It only seems right - new job, new apartment, new city... new friends. I was on an awkward first date a week or two ago and that was one of the questions that my date used to fill up a looming silence - "So, who are your friends?" I guess I really should make some. In point of fact, I've made a start. Within the past two weeks, I've had deep, soul-revealing, heart-to-heart conversations with two new strangers. We didn't actually become CLOSE, but we shared a couple of moments... As a result of one of these conversations, I may or may not be able to go back into Barnes & Noble. It says something funny and a little sad about my life that the most interesting thing my roommate and I could think of to do last Friday night was go to the bookstore. Truthfully though, there are worse ways of spending a night out on the town - there are new bestsellers to be checked out, magazines to be perused and bargain bins to be explored. For a book fanatic like myself, it's actually a very stimulating way to spend an evening. Oh sure, there aren't any strippers, but aside from that, it’s a pretty good time. So anyway, on this particular Friday night, I was looking through the discount bookcases for a birthday present for my 14-year-old niece. Fourteen-year-old nieces are very difficult to shop for, by the way - you want to get something adult for them so that they know you don't think of them as a little kid. At the same time, you don't want to get anything TOO adult or you'll be that weird uncle that none of the kids are allowed to talk to at family gatherings on the holidays. On Friday though, I was in luck. I found the perfect gift - a largish coffee-table book on pre-Raphaelite painters. It was kinda trendy, kinda adult, and yet reasonably innocent. Theoretically, she should love it. (Though of course, being 14, it's her job to hate everything and everybody on the planet, so who's to say?) At any rate, I picked up my coffee-table book and a magazine and headed toward the checkout counter. Through some odd mob-dynamic, roughly ten other shoppers decided to pay for their purchases at the exact same time that I did and the previously idle cash register was overrun by a horde of tired shoppers with armfuls of books. One moment, there wasn't a customer in sight, the next, we were like the swallows returning to Capistrano, descending on the one poor clerk behind the counter, who gulped, swallowed and braced himself for the onslaught. By sheer chance I was the first customer to reach him, with my roommate directly behind me. A line formed up behind us. It being a bookstore, there was no Muzak playing in the background or any other ambient noise to keep the people in line behind me from listening in on my conversation with the book clerk. They were polite about it - they maintained their sense of humor and didn't even shoot me any dirty looks when I asked the clerk if he'd be able to gift wrap my niece's book. He was cheerful enough, and said that wouldn't be a problem. Now, I don't know whether it was because I'd had a long day at work and was really tired or because I was a little nervous about this audience of semi-patient shoppers waiting in line behind me who I felt some sort of obligation to entertain in some way, or if it was some mystery factor that caused me to say what I said next. I started blithering in a fairly useless kind of way, though I could tell that this guy needed a conversation at this particular moment like a hole in the head. "Looks like a busy night, huh?" I said conversationally. BookBoy just shot me a look and grunted noncommittally. "Sorry to bother you with the gift wrapping," I continued. "You know, I'd do it myself, but it's not any kind of job for a man." Now, don't ask me what I meant by this. I really don't know. In point of fact, I was so clueless, that it was a good ten or fifteen seconds before it really sank in how insulting the comment was. BookBoy didn't show it, but he was pretty cheesed-off by my remark. He didn't even crack a smile as I floundered around, digging myself in deeper. "Um... Er... I mean, not any man who isn't a PROFESSIONAL.... Er.. That is... Not that working in a bookstore isn't a profession!... Um..." Now he really did shoot me a dirty look. "Um... Sorry." Another scornful look. At this point I started to hear snickering from the people in line behind me. Apparently, I was entertaining them after all. "Geez," I said, dropping my voice to a murmur, "I'm sorry. I'm making a mess of this. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?" BookBoy stopped wrapping my present and glared at me for a moment. Then he came close and murmured back to me. "Sorry Sunshine, I don't swing that way!" Getting into the car a few minutes later, I informed my roommate who was in hysterics of laughter, that we would never speak of this again. He gleefully informed me that, yes, we would. I seem to offer a lot of amusement to my roommate. He was even more amused by my other new friend. She stopped me on the street on the way to my car the other night - a young woman, not bad looking, but with that dangerous, too-friendly look in the eye that can spell trouble for the unwary. "Hi," she said. "It's YOU!" Well, she was obviously right about that, so I wasn't going to argue with her. "I think I was just talking to your brother. At the bar down the street. Jim. He's your brother, right?" I told her that I didn't have a brother named Jim. "No - Jim. You must know Jim. Nice guy - kinda sophisticated?" Well, that DEFINITELY wasn't my brother, so I told her so. I just have the kind of a face that is familiar to a lot of people. "Uh, huh," she said. "Well, let me tell you a little bit about myself..." Uh, oh.... "I'm a certified nurse-therapist and I live about a block from here. My mother is a drunk and to tell you the truth, she's not a very nice person. Would you like to go have a drink?" Uh, oh... I mumbled something noncommittal, hoping she wouldn't hurt me. "You're very cute," she continued, hardly noticing that I hadn’t said anything. "Are you married? I'll bet you're married. You look JUST like Brad Pitt in a goatee!" Now, anybody who has ever met me would agree that I look NOTHING like Brad Pitt. If I look like ANYBODY in a goatee, it's John Candy. It was at this point that I realized that this girl was either A) certifiably insane or B) a prostitute who hadn't quite yet worked out the kinks in her sales pitch. I looked in her eyes for the tiger-like glint of insanity. Nope - no insanity there. Just my luck. There can't be more than three or four pros working the streets of Manchester, and I had run into the junior associate in their firm. Laughing inside, I explained that I am a school teacher and had to get up at 4:30 the next morning. So sorry... "Jesus Christ! Can people get up that early?!" I assured her that they can. I wished her a good evening as I got into my car. "Four-thirty!" I heard her mumble to herself in disbelief as I started the car. I seem to have blown her mind with that concept. "Four-thirty!" As I drove away, watching her in my rearview mirror, still shaking her head in disbelief, I thought about what a great town Manchester is and how nice it is to be meeting some of its independent small business people.
|
|||||||||||||||||
l Copyright © 2000
HIPPOPRESS LLC. All rights reserved.