5/30/2014

list of people i’ve met (partial)

• The woman who thanks me effusively for filling out her paperwork, thanks me to the point of tears.  She used to be--still is, in fact--a dancer, a performer, and she’s no good at paperwork and she’s just so thankful that someone like me--a left hander, no less! it seems to her a lot of people who have it all together are southpaws--that someone like me is there to talk to her.
• The man who says “oh, that’s interesting” after everything that is said in conversation, and then follows it up with, “oh, now that’s interesting” when the next thing is said, and you know what, he genuinely seems to mean it.  Everything is more interesting than the last thing.
• The woman who is an extraordinarily stressed government employee with bags under her eyes the size of Montana definitely runs the whole show and lets her, let’s be honest, pretty sexist and dismissive boss take the credit.  She would, if given the option, unquestionably murder someone for an opportunity to sleep for more than five consecutive hours.  (Note:  I have met several of these.)
• The man who ran that newsstand who could not for the life of him understand my Midwestern enunciation of “The Atlantic.”  Sorry, friend, I shouldn’t have let my t’s slip into d’s, that was my bad.
• The woman asking me for directions I almost know and I hope I didn’t send her to Queens on accident.  I think I sent this woman to Queens on accident.
• The man who bags your groceries for you at Pioneer who is frankly very good at his job and I don’t know if I am supposed to tip him but I say thank you very earnestly and he smiles at me, so I think I am not actively offensive.
• The man who coaches soccer and is very good at coaching soccer and is not shy about letting you know about it.  When you take the elevator to the fourteenth floors, he says, “Too bad it’s not fifteen.  That’s the number of championships I’ve won” and smiles like Joe Biden.  Then he asks if you can help him get an apartment.
• The woman who scooped my ice cream at this very hip coffee shop in Brooklyn who looked exactly like the kind of woman who would work at a very hip coffee shop in Brooklyn, and I’m fine with that, it’s good to know when things fit together.  Also the woman who sold books at that hip bookstore in Brooklyn, she made sense, too.
• The man who is the world’s saddest fruit vendor, so you have to buy three bananas from him for a dollar, and he greets this news with the world’s saddest smile.  The bananas are ok.
• I have not yet met Donald Trump or Regis Philbin, but I hear good things about them both.