Category: random snippets

~ Coming home from the grocery store, I saw a little boy plopped in a plastic chair on the sidewalk, apple in his hand, swinging tennis shoe feet that didn’t touch the ground. Yesterday was summer-hot in San Diego, but there he was, in the glaring bright sun. Next to him in another chair, was a small cardboard box propped on its side with an action figure leaning against one cardboard wall. A diorama of sorts. I wanted to see more of this little scene, but traffic started pushing through the light and I was forced to join in the fray. As I drove past, I could see some large crooked little-boy writing in the bottom of the box, the upstage wall, if you will. The action figure was placed carefully to the side of this writing, so I sensed it was some kind of ad, something meant to draw passersby to the little boy with his apple and his box and his action figure. Because it was Sunday and the Farmer’s Market swarmed nearby, there was no way to drive around again to see what, exactly, the little boy was doing on the sidewalk there. Maybe he was selling the action figure. Maybe he was engaging in some action figure street theater. I won’t ever know for sure. Whatever it was, I drove away smiling and rooting for the little boy and his box in the hot baking sun.

~ Several times a week, MB and I see them. Our neighborhood’s wandering elderly couple. They look like Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and they are everywhere, all the time. We can be in the car, running a single errand, and see them more than once, such is the scope of their roaming. They wear khaki pants and white turtlenecks. Tennis shoes. Baseball caps. Her angel white hair sticks out from under her cap in a lump. This is their uniform, every time we see them. It makes me hot to look at them. I feel sweaty just thinking about them. Initially, we thought they had to be homeless because, literally, their clothing never changes. Her khaki pants are sort of graduated in color, grubbier and grubbier past the knee, as if she’s slogged through mud. He, on the other hand, seems quite neat, quite aware of the striking look of his tidy monochromatic attire.

After a couple of days of seeing them, we decided that they were working out. Power walking, I guess, based on the bend and movement in their arms. Or else perpetually late for the bus. Hume, I’ve noticed, always strides several paces ahead of Jessica, forcing her to trot and skip to catch up to him. He seems utterly focused on some imaginary journey in his head, obsessed with staying the course. Whatever this journey is, poor Jessica seems completely in the dark as she patters forever behind him. Just the rhythm of her steps seems to say wait for me wait for me wait for me. I’ve seen them so often I now have anxiety for her, for her balance, for her well-being. I watch her feet, hidden under the darkening khaki swell of her pants, move much faster than his and yet always always steps behind. He will never slow down and she will never catch up and I will have to accept that. Whenever I see them, I can hear that dreary Frau Schmidt from The Sound of Music drone inside my head, “The Von Trapp children don’t play. They march.” It feels a bit like that, like Hume is enforcing this eternal khaki march. I don’t know where they’re headed but, wherever it is, they are never there. I find myself wondering if they’re an old married couple. Or if they’re just friends. I wonder if he’s her personal geriatric trainer constantly pushing her harder and harder and harder. I wonder if she begs him to slow down and he simply can’t hear her. I wonder if he’s just a jerk. I wonder why his whites are so white and hers are so dingy. Some day, I’m afraid — because I occasionally have impulse control issues — I will roll the car window down and cry out from the depths of my well-intentioned buttinsky soul, “Slow down, Hume! You are marching poor Jessica to death! Slow DOWNNN, for the love of God!”

I try not to spend too much time on this blog decrying the decline of civilization in general, because basically, I’d probably never stop bitching about it. Telling a story that may illustrate that is one thing; writing whole posts where I moan and groan about things in general — well, I do try to avoid it, otherwise, again, I’d never stop. But I’m grumpy and hormoniacal today. Yes, you heard me: Hormoniacal. MB made up that term out of, oh, his deep abiding love for me, I’m sure — in all my biological variations.

So. I’m bitching a bit today. Whatevs. Perhaps later, I’ll take a pill.

~ So we’re at Target. Or I should say, we are at Target in bodily form, but one of us has taken his brain away to protect his sanity. Fine. Do what you gotta do, I say. We have to use the escalator. I approach, am about to step on, when a random dude appears to my left and steps in my way. Because he nearly bumps me, I back off — uhm, as all good gentlemen do — so that he can get on before me. Which he does not hesitate to do. (MB had his back turned and didn’t witness this. Again, his brain was elsewhere in a protective bubble.)

You know, I’m old-fashioned in certain ways. I LIKE the differences between men and women. I LIKE acknowledging that they exist. I LIKE the little niceties that women used to get from men. I LIKE those small moments of courtesy, of courtliness. I’m old-fashioned and, I guess, OLD enough to remember when something like that wouldn’t have happened — a woman stepping back so a man can go ahead of her. Why did I do that? Why did HE do that? Is everything just hopelessly upside down from what I remember back when I was a whippersnapper, etc.? WAHHH.

~ When did the phrase “No problem” replace “You’re welcome”? The server refills your iced tea. You say, “Thank you”; the server says, “No problem.” The UPS guy delivers a package. You say, “Thank you.” He says, “No problem.” You iron your husband’s shirt. He says, “Thank you.” You say, “No problem.”

I do this all the time — say “No problem” instead of “You’re welcome.” I literally cannot think of the last time I said “You’re welcome” to someone. Weird. At Boheme, I was constantly telling customers that things were “no problem,” frequently the people who were the biggest pains in my beleaguered bottom. What’s up with that? I mean, doesn’t saying “No problem” carry a vague implication that the thing you were thanked for might very well have been a problem in some way? Some unspoken way? So should a server refilling your tea say “no problem”? I mean, how is it a problem, generally? Unless the customer is a total abusive jerk, it’s not really a problem, is it? Maybe it’s just become a veiled expression of all our latent collective hostility, said with a smile. Or maybe I’m making too much of this, but I say it all the time. I don’t say “You’re welcome.” I say “No problem.” Why? Why? Well, probably because I’m a hater and they’re not welcome. This is all I can surmise in my current state of mind. Why can’t we just say “You’re welcome” anymore?

I think there are times when saying “No problem” is appropriate — perhaps when someone goes out of his way for you, doing something that might actually be inconvenient for him in some way. For instance, I drop my purse and the contents go flying. A stranger comes up to help me gather up all the pieces. He basically stops what he’s doing, goes out of his way to help me. So I say, “Thank you” and he says, “No problem,” assuring me that what he stopped to do for me was not too huge an inconvenience for him. “You’re welcome” would have worked here, too, but the “no problem” was given as an assurance that he was, if not happy, at least willing, to help me. But when a server notices my iced tea is low and refills the glass, unasked, does that warrant a “no problem”?

Are we over-offering assurances or trying to keep hostility at bay?

~ Although, it’s possible that I spend too much time thinking about the niggling little things in life.

~ Finally, pardon me, but why are there ants in my freezer? Live ants? Crawling around? There’s nothing in there that would interest them. They aren’t crawling on anything in there — they just wander around the perimeter, blindly following and climbing on each other. Basically, a freezing miniature version of the Israelites wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. The last two days, whenever I open the freezer, I have either been battling live crawlers or wiping up their tiny shrunken carcasses. I am now just avoiding the freezer entirely. Because it’s vexing. And disturbing. And it makes me feel a little bit like a hobo.

I really want someone to make it all go away, but I’m afraid they’d fix it, I’d thank them, and they’d say “no problem.”

Life is hard, pippa.