Diamonds in the Rough

At some point in our lives, we've all worked at jobs that were, politely put, less than stellar. When I first moved to the TC, I worked retail at a boutique gift store. It was intended as a short-term gig, a place to land while I got my bearings in a new city. Six months, I reckoned, would do the trick.

Over a year later I was still there. I worked weird hours and could barely pay my rent, but I'd met such wonderful people. My coworkers were so bright and funny that they occasionally made me forget my aching back and the last customer who'd treated me like dirt.

There was a guy in a band who would write little songs, such as his ballad about the Loomis truck driver called "Armored Car of Love." There was a woman who would twirl rolls of wrapping paper like batons, tossing them up in the air with a flourish. There was a girl who would work late nights during the Christmas rush, and we'd dance outrageously to a techno version of Bing Crosby after the store closed.

But the story that makes me laugh without fail involves another girl who was (and is) utterly delightful. We'll call her Heidi.  Because that's her name.  For a few months, we were selling personalized bracelets. You could buy a simple leather band and choose individual "diamond"-encrusted letters to thread on in any combination that suited your taste. 

On one particularly slow afternoon, Heidi decided to do a little shopping. She announced that she was going to make a bracelet for her sister, and proceeded to carefully pluck sparkly pieces out of the trays. She finally turned, quite seriously, to display her creation.

"Do you think she'll like it?"

I'd expected her sister's name, perhaps, or initials, or an inspirational word that held special meaning for them both.  What I saw instead, spelled out in glittery diamond letters, was "POOP."

It was ridiculous. And genius. And still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

I eventually left that job, partly due to a poor change of management, and partly because having to call 911 after skateboarders threw lit firecrackers into the store didn't seem worth $8 an hour. I was too young and dumb to realize that you shouldn't burn bridges, because I frickin' dynamited that one. But I was lucky enough to know a few real gems, and that's worth a lot.

Drink. Click.

Over the holidays, I went home to South Dakota and spent a week eating my weight in goodies and generally trying to return to my natural vegetative/hibernating state. 

One night I heard my dad shout that he was watching slides in the basement. I roused myself from beneath a heated blanket and made my way down, where I found him clicking through a tray of my parents' wedding pictures from 1974.

I was well acquainted with all the images, since I'd painstakingly scanned, edited, and archived them several years before. But I'd never had the accompanying commentary from a happily buzzed father. 

"Look at that. Look at your mom. She looks like a freakin' movie star!" 

Drink. Click. 

"I never really noticed how pretty that dress was. With the lace on the sleeves and neck ..."

Drink. Click. 

"Whoah! Someone put a lot of work into those streamers."

Long pause while it slowly dawned on him after 40 years. 

"You know, I bet when all of us guys left and went out to the bar, the girls stayed behind and decorated!"

At that moment my mom arrived to confirm, with an amused smirk, that he was correct. Then she joined him on the couch to fill in the rest of the blanks, and they both looked back on each other as if for the first time. 

Drink. Click. 

Minority Retort

I just read an article about the 2003 film "The Last Samurai," and I was reminded of a story one of my good friends told me.

If you're unfamiliar with the plot of this movie, Tom Cruise plays an American military officer who is training Japanese soldiers in the 1870s and eventually embraces the samurai culture. It's basically Dances With Wolves, but with katanas instead of tatonkas. 

Anyhoo, my friend went to this movie in the theatre. During the first scene in which our hero dons traditional samurai garb, there was a startled outburst from several rows back. 

"What the -- I didn't know Tom Cruise was Chinese!"

Secret Service With a Smile

I went to see a play the other night at a local theatre. My friend and I arrived quite early, and there were very few people around. So when one of the ushers offered to take us to our seat level in the elevator, we agreed.

It was just the three of us on the way down, and we started joking that it felt like such special treatment, as if the usher were escorting us to safety. When I remarked that he even had an earpiece like a secret service agent, he joined in the game mock-seriously.

ME: "Do I have a code name?"

HIM: (totally straight-faced)  "I'm not allowed to reveal that information."

ME: "Why not?"

HIM: "It's a liability issue.  In case I have to take extreme measures for your protection."

ME:  "Ah. Plausible deniability."

HIM: "Exactly."

When the elevator reached the main floor, he insisted on going out first to check the hallway, then led us to our seats.  I, however, decided that a pre-show trip to the restroom might be advisable. As I re-entered the theatre, my bodyguard happened to be standing outside the door.

"It's all clear," he whispered conspiratorially. 

After an excellent show, my friend and I lounged quite awhile at the theatre bar . . . long enough that a couple staff members joined us after their shifts. One of them was the secret service usher.

HIM: "I see you made it out safely."

ME: "Yes, thanks for your excellent protection."

There was a long silence, during which we all sipped our drinks.  Then he added, "Your code name was Hootenanny, by the way."

Aging Like a Fine Whine

I was unintentionally rude the other day. I was standing in the liquor store, pondering which bottle of wine to buy, when I suddenly became aware that someone was speaking to me. I looked up to see a woman standing at a small table, evidently handing out samples of some promotional cocktail. And evidently, she had said the same thing to me several times:

"I see you don't yet have a drink in your hand, young lady."

It wasn't that I didn't want to sample the signature cocktail. It was just that hearing the words "young lady" automatically made me assume she couldn't possibly be talking to me.

You see, I have officially accepted that I'm well out of "young lady" range and deep into "ma'am" territory. It's not ideal, but it's certainly a vast improvement on "sir," which I was called at the grocery store immediately following the liquor store incident.

The woman brandishing booze was likely using the phrase to sweeten her pitch. However, I will take even insincere flattery with the same delight as when I get carded. Any time a server asks to see my ID, I simply think, "You're adorable."

Or perhaps she was being super ironic, like calling a fat guy "Slim," or a tall guy "Shorty," or a woman on the wrong side of 30 "young lady." I don't know! I didn't detect any sarcasm, just the faint whiff of alcohol and ginger ale.

I turned her down as politely as I could, and then made my wine selection. The guy working the register was not fooled. I didn't even get carded.

That's Nuts

I have a friend whose child is attending daycare for the first time. Since he's nearly three and this is all new, he's understandably had a little trouble adjusting to the change. After a particularly rough day that required an early pick-up, I asked my friend what his son had done that caused the daycare to text him in a panic.

DAD:  "He was just crying a lot."

ME:  "But kids cry sometimes. Your daycare provider can't handle that?"

DAD:  "Apparently not. She said she's never seen a child do that before. But I think, since you work with kids all day, surely you can imagine a child doing that. It's conceivable."

And then he gave the greatest, most bizarre example ever.

DAD:  "I mean, it's a kid crying.  It's not like you saw a squirrel pick up a tire."

Indeed.

Tricks are for Kids

I'm going to go out on a limb here, since I'm not a mom, and say this: Kids can be assholes. I think many of my friends with children would agree with this statement in general, and some of the best parents will even apply it to their own offspring.

But I'm thinking of a specific case that happened a couple weeks ago. I showed up at my local grocery store, ready to restock my oft-bare kitchen cupboards. As I wheeled my cart through the produce section, I noticed a woman and her daughter, maybe four or five years old, strolling ahead of me.

Let me be clear on this. At no point did I antagonize this kid. I didn't make eye contact or wave at her or smile or mouth a greeting of any kind. I certainly didn't make a face.

However, for some reason, this kid decided to act super scared of me. I say "act," because when her mother wasn't looking, she was fine. But as soon as her mother turned in her direction, this girl looked in my direction and cowered behind the cart.

You know how you cross paths with the same people over and over again when you're shopping? Unfortunately, that was the case here.

It was quite the performance, so I don't blame the mother for starting to cast wary, confused, and/or pissed off glances at me. I didn't know what to do. Protesting might make me look even guiltier, as would suddenly veering off into a different aisle.

And what reason would she have to doubt her daughter? I'm a potentially harmful stranger who might be doing all manner of things behind her back, and such an angel would never lie. Except that kids do lie. All the time. 

So there I was. A creepy, childless woman trailing well behind a mischievous little thespian. She might have been having a blast, but she was making me look like a real weirdo. I desperately wanted to draw my index finger slowly across my neck while giving that kid crazy eyes the next time she shot a trembling lip at me.

But I didn't. Because I left my apartment to get food, not arrested.

These are the kinds of moral victories you sometimes have to sacrifice when you're dealing with assholes of any age.  You win this time, little girl. This time.

Attack of the Killer Vac

The woman who lives next door to me likes to keep a clean apartment. A very clean apartment. I know this because she vacuums every day for at least an hour, usually between 11:00 and noon. This seems just a bit excessive, even though she does have a potentially messy little tornado of a two-year-old (and possibly some OCD?) But it never really bothered me  . . . until she got a different vacuum cleaner.

This new machine does not emit a low, white-noise-like drone. It sounds, for lack of a better comparison, like a swarm of very angry bees. And it's SO LOUD. You can hear it throughout the entire building, including from the parking lot. It's the kind of high-pitched, whiny tone that worms its way so deeply into your brain that you can't remember a time when you weren't hearing it.

I should probably mention that I'm not good with repetitive noises. There would be no surer way to drive me insane than making a recurring annoying sound, especially one that I couldn't identify. There you go, future torturers. I handed you that one on a silver platter.

For example, not long ago I was enjoying a lovely afternoon when an animal (I'm assuming a bird) started screeching outside. It was piercing and unrelenting, and paced at regular intervals.

SCREEEECH!  Roughly a minute would pass.  SCREEEECH!  Another minute.  SCREEEECH! This went on for hours.  Hours.

It got to the point where I considered going out to track it down. But what would I do if I found it? If it was injured, I couldn't nurse it back to health. Alternatively, I couldn't bring myself to put a hand over its beak and slowly choke it out while whispering, "Shhhhhh . . .  shhhhh!"

I decided that soft-hearted people with no restorative skills should probably let nature take its course, and I resigned myself to hoping that something would just eat it. Or have sex with it. Maybe it was calling for a mate. In any case, I could offer no relief.

Eventually, the screeching stopped, as the vacuuming does -- as most noises do. Except my other neighbor's overly abundant cacophony of wind chimes. [shakes fist] Wind chimes!!! Soothing in a mild breeze, absolutely maddening in a winter storm. They should be sold with a warning label: May cause pleasant drowsiness or fits of rage, depending on weather. I like the sound of that.