~Wednesday~ It’s been a while since I’ve caught the 8:15 city bus, which used to be my “routine,” and this morning a couple was at the stop when I arrived. They were an African-American couple, whom from their conversation, which was impossible to not overhear (not that I would try to not overhear it even if it were possible), I would surmise attend college classes together, although I suppose it could be high school.
The girl had a serious “like” problem, and the conversation in which she used it is what told me they are in some kind of school together. She was relating a conversation to the boyfriend, and it proceeded as, “She was, like, you have to show me a breakfast pass if you’re going to come to class late, and I was, like, I’ve come from breakfast without a pass before, and she was, like, well you need one now for this class. And I talked to Stacy and she was, like, ‘I’ve never had to show a breakfast pass for that class before…’ so that’s, like, jacked up.”
When people use like so much like that, I always wonder, “Have you listened to how you talk on tape ever?” And then I wonder what their reaction would be if they did. If it would be, “That’s just how we talk these days,” or if it would be (what I would like to imagine it would be), “Oh my god. I had no idea I say that word so much. I’m going to work on that.”
I had a glorious meeting-less day at work.
At lunch time, I walked over to Cameron Village where I took care of two things:
- Paid ($10.00) for My Stroke of Insight (Large Print Edition), which I left in the seat-back pocket of the Raleigh-to-Atlanta leg of my flight to New Orleans for the Gulf Coast Alternative Spring Break Trip back in March.
- Picked up my copy of The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, which is our next book for the Mostly Social Book Club.
On the way to the CAT bus stop in Cameron Village, to catch it back to the office, I passed Swoozie’s of Cameron Village, which is going out of business, and I looked around in there mostly at stationery and cards. I need about 5 cards right now, and I found one there that I liked, so bought it.
At the bus stop, a sight-impaired woman sat on the bench talking to a straggly looking gentleman, and she talked pretty much non-stop. She had a retractable red-tipped white cane at her side, and she was running through what you could tell were a few pages from the script she had created about her life, and I imagined the words as if they were tickling the ivories of a player piano—the story having been so ingrained, and having been told so many times, it could have told itself.
She said, “Even though my dad’s been gone quite a while now, I still miss him a lot. He was such a lovely person, and my absolute hero. My favorite time with him were the last two years of his life when he was he was sick, because he stayed home all the time, and I felt protected from my mom when he was there.
“My mom was abusive—not physically, but mentally, emotionally, and verbally. I’ll give you an example… [Editorial comment: At this point I envisioned Beth Grant, playing Sissy in Sordid Lives throwing her arms up beside her head not unlike the signal for a touchdown in football, and saying, “Off and running!”] One day, I went outside and I was always a curious child, and I saw what looked like a scorpion. But, when I got up close to it I realized it was only the shedding of a scorpion. Did you know that scorpions shed?”
“No,” the man answered with the only word I ever heard him get in edgewise.
“Well they do,” she jumped right back in. “And I brought that home in a jar and when I showed it to my mother she said, ‘That’s nice,’ and that was it. The next day, I came back to the jar and as I reached into the jar to get the skin out, it moved. She had replaced the skin with a live scorpion. That’s the kind of thing she used to do. It would have bitten me. It wouldn’t have been fatal, but those Texan scorpions are highly poisonous. It would have started with my fingers getting numb, and then would have moved up my arm, and…” and she went on as if completing that aborted act in story would somehow make her mother seem even more monstrous than she’d already made her out to be.
The bus arrived 10-12 minutes late, and I boarded, relieved to be spared any further Mommie Dearest stories. I’m quite sure a “No more wire hangers!” story was in the queue.
Just after getting off the bus on Clark Avenue, someone drove by in a car and called out to me. I think it was Kat H., one of the students with whom I went on the Gulf Coast Alternative Spring Break Trip. She started reading my blog shortly after the trip, and if she reads this entry, perhaps she’ll confirm or deny it was her. 🙂
I had Joe over for dinner tonight, since he was off work and I’d burned a CD of the Wicked soundtrack for him in anticipation of seeing the play on Saturday at the DPAC.
We had Sabrett hot dogs on the grill, with some southern-style potato salad, along with some Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips for appetizers and with dinner and drinks.
We had a good number of dancers and bar patrons at dancing tonight, but it was pretty much completely unpleasant to me, as the huge fan that we use is broken and they had this tiny little table/window fan sitting out, which did absolutely nothing to cool the heat and humidity pouring into the place with both the front and stairway up to the smoker’s patio doors being left open all night.
I’m going to call next week before going out there to see if that big fan has been repaired or replaced, and if not, I’m not going. I left there at just after 10:30.