Talking to Strangers

My Date with a Deaf Girl

2010-10-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks I've been giving the whole online dating thing another shot. The last few times I've tried it, I've gone into it with the gung ho determination of finding a serious relationship immediately – and have been sordidly disappointed when in fact that didn't happen even a little bit. On this round of giving it a shot, I've adopted the stance that I would simply like to meet some interesting people and go do some fun things that I might otherwise not have done.

Like go on a date with a deaf girl...

Jim Croce has a song called, “And I remember her.” It's a song about being with a woman whose language you don't speak. One of the lyrics is, “We passed away the hours, talking with our eyes and laughing because I spoke not her language. Still I remember her: we understood completely.” After my date with someone who didn't speak my language – and whose language I barely speak – I'm 90% sure that Jim Croce never actually had this experience, but really just WANTED to have a romantic evening with a Parisian hottie.

Out of respect for my date, I'll change her name to Anna. I found her profile on OKCupid and noticed that she had “sign language” listed as something she speaks fluently. Very few people actually speak sign language fluently – and most of those who do are deaf. As a hearing person who used to say he was fluent in sign language – I made the assumption that she too was a hearing person who just spoke sign language “pretty well.” My general strategy with writing women on dating sites is to find something uncommon in their profile and message them about that. I personally find it much more interesting when I receive a message from someone that asks me a really smart question rather than one that says, “Hey, I like your pic. U seem cool. Lol!”

My first message to her was something along the lines of, “I took four years of sign language and am pretty sure I couldn't hold my own in a conversation with a deaf four year old. How is it that you speak sign language fluently, did you go to Gallaudet?” (Gallaudet being the all-in-sign university in Washington DC.) Yes, indeed she did go to Gallaudet, she told me. She started to lose here hearing at 4, and was completely deaf by 13. At some point in her teenage years, she had a cochlear implant put in (a super-hearing aid) and it has been working great for her ever since.

Cochlear implants are a very commonly discussed topic in the deaf community. If you're interested in seeing a fascinating movie about deafness, and the culture war within the community about the use of implants – check out the film The Sound and The Fury.

Anyway – I made the assumption that because she grew up hearing, had “English” listed as a language she spoke fluently, and was meeting guys on a mainstream dating site (as opposed to a specialized dating site for the deaf community, such as Deaf Passions) that our date would be done primarily in English. We might greet each other in sign language, and I might say a few things in sign here and there to show of my multilingual prowess – but aside from the fact that it would be an interesting topic for conversation, her deafness wouldn't be a hurdle.

In all fairness – I have a feeling she assumed I was downplaying my own ability to sign. At one point in time (such as when I was a student of sign language) I probably could have done on an entire date in sign. My old girlfriend Carolyn took sign language as well, and she and I would frequently sign when in public and had something we needed to say privately – and we would also sit on the couch and have conversations that way from time to time for fun.

I recognized Anna as she walked into the Starbucks. She looked just like she did in her pictures (which is more rare than it should be. My friend Rob has told me countless stories of going on date with a woman and only finding out once they arrive that their profile picture was taken 15 years earlier.)

“Hi Anna, nice to meet you,” I said when she sat down at the table. She smiled brightly and kind of shrugged her shoulders. “How are you doing?” I asked a little hesitantly. She smiled again.

“Oh no...” I thought. This was not quite what I was expecting.

“How are you?” I signed. “I'm good, nice to meet you,” she signed and said simultaneously. Her spoken English was a bit louder than a whisper – and quite difficult to understand. I'm not sure how much easier it would have been if we had been in a quiet location – but no less, it became clear very quickly that I was not going to be able to rely on her speaking for communication.

“Do you read lips at all?” I asked (in sign) early on. “Not really,” she told me. So – I can't rely on her speaking, and she can't rely on mine. As it occurred to me that this meant I was going to have to actually sign the entire time, I noticed I'd already finished half of my coffee. I needed to calm down. My level of nervousness wasn't going to get me anywhere.

Anna is an American Sign Language (ASL) teacher. She teaches second semester in one of the two programs where I did my ASL training. I tried to keep reminding myself, “she's a teacher – she'll be patient with you.” But still, I was trying to say things as quickly as possible to look proficient and not slow the conversation down to a beginners-grind – though my sloppy speed translated into the deaf equivalent of mumbling.

One thing that kept surprising me was how distracting it was for me to try to sign something while I had something in my mouth (like ice.) Vocal speakers are so used to opening their mouth when they want to express something – it's hard to turn that off even when you're speaking only with your hands. (A piece of ice may or may not have fallen out of my mouth at one point. Anna pretended not to notice.)

I realized at some point that if this was going to be a successful interaction whatsoever – I needed to put everything I've ever learned about dating off to the side and just try to talk to her. It is absolutely impossible to try and seem suave, or to build a sense of mystery and excitement when you're struggling to say basic words. Very quickly, I found myself telling her things that I would never say on a first date – simply because I knew how to say them. She asked where I worked, and within a few sentences I was telling her about my 401(k) simply because I knew how to sign “401(k).” I told her I'm the youngest of four and left it at that, simply because explaining that I have one full sibling, one half sibling, and one semi-adopted sibling would have done nothing but confuse both of us. I told her my sister Maggie is “a theater” and my sister Marja is a doctor (the sign for nurse and doctor are almost identical – and I realized I'd said the wrong one too late to go back and correct myself.) She asked what my favorite TV show was and I signed, “Dexter.” I asked her what hers was and after saying three times what I thought to be “My Thbustrs,” she pulled out her cellphone and typed “Mythbusters,” onto the screen and held it in front of me.

I told her I love baseball – and she signed “You Boston?” I signed “Yes. Who you?” Verbally she said, “So sorry,” and signed “Yankee.” I shook my fist at her. That is not an official ASL sign, but it is universally understood to mean what I intended it to mean. She told me she played softball for Gallaudet, and I did a terrible job of explaining that I played baseball in college – one season at The University of East Anglia in England. She asked if I played for UofA – I tried to say “I wish,” but said “I love.”

We talked for a little over an hour. The lulls in conversation where we'd just sit looking at each other until I'd get uncomfortable with the fact that I couldn't think of any words that I hadn't already used grew longer and more frequent. I noticed her looking at my watch at one point and she commented that it was very nice. I took this opportunity to look at it too, and say that I needed to get going.

She looked disappointed. I'm sure she was disappointed. While the date was a frustrating experience for me, as it was a completely new phenomenon to try and impress a woman without being able to rely on my mastery of language, what must be exponentially MORE frustrating for Anna is that she probably has to deal with communication barriers like this (or worse) on every single date she goes on. I am definitely curious why she has chosen to use a mainstream dating site instead of one tailored towards the deaf – but after one date where we barely even got through introductions, I have not earned the right to ask her that question.

Before the date, I'd heard people say things like, “I could never date someone who is deaf” and saw that as being similar to, “I could never date someone who is black.” It seemed like an offensive concept – why should that matter? And in a sense, it doesn't matter. Deafness on its own shouldn't prevent me or anyone from being with someone. But an inability to communicate effectively – whether it be deafness or any other form of a barrier – will stifle any relationship before it even has a chance to get off the ground.

Schruting It with Strangers

2010-07-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

On the tail end of my Fourth of July weekend trip, I had a three hour layover in Houston. The flight into Houston was on the smallest airplane I've ever even thought to exist, filled with a bunch of petite females reading Eclipse on their Kindles, and of course – one enormous Army Ranger. As luck would have it, I shared a two-seat row with the ranger, and we shared the intimate experience of trying to pretend the other person wasn't there while we sat on one each others laps.

It was small enough that we were only allowed one small personal item: anything larger than a loaf of bread had to be checked. (I convinced them that my 28 pound briefcase filled with a laptop, a gaggle of electrical cables, four novels and an MCE training manual was smaller

than a very large loaf of bread.) They told us that our checked baggage wouldn't be retrieved at the baggage claim, but instead they would, “send someone to get it for us and bring it to the door.”

As we stood around by the door, I noticed a little girl standing a few feet away, starting at me. She looked down at my shirt, looked at my face, smiled, then looked back at my shirt.

I used to wear humorous t-shirts all the time, but eventually grew annoyed by the fact that everyone feels obligated to say something about it if they get the joke. And when I say that, please take into consideration the fact that I'm the author of this blog, and love when strangers talk to me... and it still happened so much that it bothered even me. These days, a funny t-shirt

has to be subtle before I'll buy it. The particular one I was wearing at the time this unfolded reads in stenciled black letters, “SCHRUTE FARMS BEETS.” The only people who comment on this shirt are bona fide fans of The Office. Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the show would get a shirt that says 'Dunder Mifflin,' - but Schrute Farms is only mentioned every now and then.

After the bags arrived, I was told I have to get on a train to go from Terminal-A to Terminal-C. I hear the mother of the little girl who was still grinning at my shirt say, “Come on sweetie, we have to go get on the train now.” I deduced that following a few paces behind was a safe bet.

As we're walking, I realize that this is a family of four. Momma Bear and her three daughters, ages probably fifteen, nine and six. The six year old is the one who was grinning at me, and is also the one who tugged on Momma Bear's arm and whispered something to her once I'm sitting across from the family on the train.

Momma Bear smiles at me and says, “My daughter wants me to ask if your shirt is from The Office.”

“Yes, it is,” I say to the six year old.

“You know,” says Momma Bear, “you kind of look like one of the guys from the show.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask. “Which one?”

“Oh, I don't know... I don't watch it that often,” she says. “Schrute? The guy from your shirt? Dwight?” she asks.

The fifteen year old rips her headphones out of her ears and groans. “Mooomm!!”

“What?!” asks Momma Bear.

“He does not look like Dwight! Ugh!” says the fifteen year old, looking embarrassed and shaking her head at me.

“Yeah,” says the nine year old. “He does not look ANYTHING like Dwight, Mom! You are way better looking than Dwight, like... way!” she says to me.

I look down at the six year old who hasn't said a word but continues to beam at me, and is nodding her head.

“I am very sorry if I offended you,” says Momma Bear, coyly. “Maybe I was thinking of Jim,” she says, giving a little wink.

“No offense taken, I actually dressed up as Dwight for Halloween a few years ago.”

“Really?” asks the fifteen year old. “That's so cool!” says the nine year old. The six year old waves.

In writing this post, I broke one of my unofficial rules, which is to not write a post while it's still happening. While the conversation ended about an hour before I started to write, the family was sitting about 15 feet away from me as I wrote. My flight to Phoenix and their flight to San Diego were departing from adjacent gates, and as I was putting the finishing touches on this, the six year old wandered over and waved at me one more time before boarding her flight with the family.

If you're wondering whether or not I waved back, I always wave back. A good friend of mine recently asked me how I have these types of interactions with strangers so consistently.(Actually, the exact words she used in her text message were, "Why are your stories so awesome?" but whatever.) If a kid waves, wave back. If a nun asks if she can share a table with you in a food court, say you were hoping she would ask. If a homeless person inside a grocery store in a bad part of town asks if they can teach you the secret to buying the perfect apple – say “absolutely.” Never be the one to break eye contact first, and always reciprocate. Always. That is my secret.

The Longest Yes

2010-06-10T20:38:00.001-07:00

In the world of sales, there are a few fundamental rules that I think are all significant enough to earn the honor of being called “the most important rule.”

Being assumptive is a sales person’s best friend, but knowing when to stop talking and wait silently for a response is assumptiveness’s hot little sister. Each play critical roles which can be used exclusively or in tandem, but mastering your timing is key.

Recently, I’ve been putting a lot of work into my ability to wait silently for a response. The temptation to fill an awkward pause with one’s own thoughts is menacing. It is something I REALLY struggled with as a reporter, and have lost some huge sales in my financial career because I was the one to speak first during a critical pause near the end of a meeting. But today, I experienced a moment I will look back on for the rest of my career as a turning point in my ability to wait patiently for the big yes.

I was in a meeting with an elderly gentlemen discussing a new product MCE is offering. Just as in every meeting, the critical moment came, and it was time for me to say my final words.

“So now we’re going to go ahead and put in that application,” I said, and then waited. I’ve just told the man that he’s going to buy my product, but can’t initiate the transaction until he’s given me confirmation that yes, he’s going to buy my product. Ultimately, I’ve just asked for his permission to sell him something with the explicit intent of hiding my question in a confident statement.

Five seconds. Ten seconds. Do not speak, Dave Robbins. Be silent.

“Well, let me ask you,” says the gentlemen. “Here’s what I’m thinking…”

I nod. Don’t make a sound. Don’t go back into your pitch for fear that his question will stump you. Be as still as possible. Make as little noise.

“See, back when I was a boy, we didn’t really do our money through the bank. My poppa, see, he was in the war dropping bombs on the Ottomans out of the airplanes they had back then and when he got paid, he didn’t get a check. Do you even get checks? I mean, you work at a darn bank – how do they pay you here?” he asked.

“Direct deposit,” I tell him.

“See I don’t even know what the hell ya’ll are talking about these days with your direct deposit and the such. When my poppa got paid during the war, what they’d do is they’d send a telegram to my momma, and it’d tell her that on this day and at this time there’d be a boat comin down to the dock, and she was to send someone and they would pick up his pay. Now, my momma was a good workin woman and she didn’t have time to walk all the way down there, because even though poppa made good money we didn’t have that kind of money where we could live near the water. So every few weeks my momma would come wake me up in the morning and feed me a big full breakfast, and tell me to walk down to the dock with my wagon and pick up poppas pay.

“Now, they didn’t pay him with a check or anything fancy like what you just told me about – what they would do is they’d send him his pay in nickels. Can you believe that? So me and my neighbor Jed and all of the other boys in our streets – we would walk down to the dock together with our wagons and we’d wait for the Navy boat to come and what would they do? They would fill up our wagons with nickels! And we’d eyeball each others loads to see whose daddy had gotten a bonus for killing the most Ottomans and then with our loot and bounty, we’d make that there 12 mile walk back home.

“Now, usually by the time we got home I was tired, and sometimes my momma would tell me I could go back out and get a root beer with one of them nickels if I wanted. But normally I’d just ask if I could keep the nickel in my piggy bank and use it to buy a balloon or some horse shoes later.”

With the wide eyed fascination of a blogger, instead of a salesmen, I let the words, “Go on,” slip through my teeth when he paused and looked down at the brochure we’d been going over a few minutes prior.

“Oh. Well. You know, I’m just thinking – because at that point I’d go change my clothes and put on my dinner shoes instead of my street shoes and my sister and I would help momma make us some dinner. You know what we ate a lot of during the war?”

“No sir.”

“We ate potatoes. Lots and lots of potatoes. Fried potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Raw potatoes. Baked potatoes. Potatoes and ham. Potatoes and pepper. Hah! You can’t have too much pepper!”

“You sure can’t,” I said.

“Have you ever had a fried potato, Brian?”

I’d like to point out here that I was wearing my nametag during this conversation.

“Like a French fry?” I asked.

“No, not like a French fry. You know what, I’m gunna give you something to put in your pocket and think on. One day here soon, I want you to go home and put a pot of cooking oil on your stove and when it gets good and hot, just go ahead and drop in a potato. It’ll take a few minutes to cook but believe me, you’ll know when it’s done. Potatoes can burst, you know. It’ll start screaming and hollering, and when that potato is making noises like you ain’t believin, you’ll know that it’s done. And when you eat it, you’ll think of the Ottomans.”

We made eye contact. He watched me. I watched him. 15 seconds went by and I broke my own rule – I spoke. I had to.

“Uhhh… okay. So, that answered all of your remaining questions?” I asked.

“Yup. Yeah. That’ll be good. I just wanted to think that one all the way through before I went ahead and signed something.”

“Not a problem, sir. I’m always glad to help people think through their decisions.”

I have yet to decide if I’m going to try his fried potato suggestion.

Tommy's Age

2010-05-27T22:03:00.001-07:00

"How old are you?" she asked, as she put down the brochure I had handed her, and shifted her eyes to me.

"I'm old enough," I said.

"I didn't mean it like that," she told me, pushing the brochure off to the side.

"How did you mean it?" I asked.

"You look like my son's age. I have two boys. One is 21, and one is 23. They're both in Afghanistan. I just miss them," she said. "How old are you?"

"I'm 23," I told her.

"You're Tommy's age," she said. "He's not okay... he's seen too many things for a boy his age," she said, "your age..."

I waited for her to continue.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yes, mam," I told her.

"But I mean... you. Do you like your life? Are you happy?"

"Yes, mam."

"Good. I'm glad you are," she said. "I hope Dylan will be okay when he's your age."

Clearance!

2010-04-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

It is official. I have clearance to speak!

I have a new job, and I’m allowed to blog about it! I officially started yesterday, and I’m thrilled to be working there. As you may remember, my previous employer demanded absolute secrecy from their independent contractors (of which I was one.) They didn’t want me revealing their name, my title, what licenses/designations I held, or even vague descriptions of what I was doing for a living on blogs, Facebook, or even in personal emails. Out of professional courtesy, I still will not reveal their name, my title, vague descriptions of what I did, or specific accounts of how miserable working there turned out to be (but I will wag a saucy middle-finger in their direction!)

My current employer’s policy on things such as blogs and Facebook is much less ridiculous. In short, it states, “don’t reveal client information,” “don’t make statements on our behalf,” and “don’t get us sued, you f***ing derelicts.” As I have professional training in journalism, none of these things they will require of me seem the least bit daunting. I’m not even required to protect their name! I will, however, do just that.

My creative ambitions do not include writing a blog about my employer and colleagues – I simply want the freedom to write about the outlandish things that people say to me on a daily basis without the risk of losing my job. (And believe me - when people feel comfortable talking to you about MONEY, they feel comfortable talking to you about plenty of other things.)

And now, thanks to MCE, I have that freedom. That’s right: MCE. It stands for “My Current Employer.” It will be how I refer to the fine institution who has taken me on as a personal banker, and after a few posts of writing about them, it will become that “in” thing only longtime readers know the meaning of. In a few years, after this explanatory post is long buried and I have millions of readers worldwide, there will be conspiracy theorists on crappy websites drinking cheap scotch out of paper cups arguing about its meaning.

The atmosphere of working in a bona fide and respected financial institution is very different than anything else I’ve experienced before. On the first day of my job at the magazine in college, people asked me what I was majoring in and if I liked watching “The Office.” At my previous financial firm, people asked me if I had just graduated and whether or not I liked fart jokes. Here – the first question people asked me after we exchanged names was, “and are you married?”

My default answer, “No, but I have a cat,” is effective because, not only does it answer the direct question, but it also answers all implied follow up questions such as, “do you have kids?” “are you engaged?” “are you living with someone?” “do you have a girlfriend?” and “do you generally walk around your apartment without a shirt on?” (Well, maybe not that last one – but it is the case.)

While the possibility of becoming the victim of a violent crime exists for anyone who works in a building with a ton of cash on hand – it’s still not too fun to think about or plan for. The “security” conversation I had with a manager this morning was a little unnerving. Though I won’t say any details (for obvious reasons), I will say that the whole conversation was uncomfortably reminiscent of the sex talk I had with my father in high school where the birds and the bees flew right out the window and he said to me, “I just want to make sure you know that the longer you keep at this, the more likely you are to…” Well, you can fill in the rest.

Other than that, the only bummer of the new job is that they do – indeed – have a “No Obnoxious Ties” rule. I have yet to order uniforms/ties, but I am not holding my breath that they will have anything as wicked as my pink and platinum rockstar-tie in the catalog of "approved apparel."

My first two days have been filled with a lot of orientation/familiarization/logistical stuff. I’m going to guess I’ve got a few more days of this coming up, as there’s a lot to learn before you’re given authorization to sell financial products on behalf of a large bank. But, unlike my last job – I get paid for 100% of my training – so they can sit me on the sidelines to learn for as LONG as they want.

So anyway, that’s all I have for now. Once I start interacting with customers on a regular basis, I’ll have a source of content I’m free to use. Finally! Also, I’ve got to go shopping in the next few days to get some new work-slacks… who knows, maybe I’ll talk to someone interesting at the store…

Until next time, readers!

Doppelganger Strangers

2010-04-09T22:20:00.000-07:00

I feel that I may have mentioned this before…

I’ve been told a few times in my life that I look like an actor named Joshua Jackson. This me looking fellow made a name for himself playing the role of Pacey on Dawson’s Creek, and according to my friend Jenn, is now on the show Fringe.

When I say, “I’ve been told a few times,” I mean – I’ve had about 1,000 people ask me “do you know who you look JUST like?” (They’re always so disappointed when I guess right.) I’ll say I’ve had an equal number of people skip the question and just tell me I look like him. Some people have cautiously asked me if I am him – and then, well – there have been a small but glorious handful of people who have been certain I am him. Those ones are the most fun. One of those is the story I think I may have told before – and if I haven’t… well, I’ll tell it in the future… maybe

It’s usually full grown humans making this mistake. Almost exclusively women – and as of today, that gender demographic hasn’t changed. But full grown women? You have some competition.

I was in Trader Joe’s today getting some food. I was doing my normal A.D.D. shopping thing and wandering back and fourth from one side of the store to the other grabbing things as they caught my attention.

I saw the look in her green eyes the first time I walked by.

I kind of smiled at her, but tried to not to get her hopes up. So I grabbed some bagels, grabbed some carrots, grabbed some mustard: by the third time I walked passed – it was too late.

This little girl couldn’t keep her cool anymore. She was probably 7. She grabbed her mom’s arm, yanked on it and S-C-R-E-A-M-E-D, “Mommy, that’s the boy from Dawson’s Creek!”

Why a 7 year old is watching re-runs of Dawson’s Creek is a thing I’d like to know, but no less – this was fucking adorable. I’m not sure what the mom said to her, but it probably included both, “keep your voice down,” and, “no, that’s not.”

I’ve always been a little bit jealous of people who have admirable celebrity doppelgangers. Someone confusing me for Jason Varitek or Tom Selleck would be awesome. I have, however, no such luck.

Granted, I’d probably have a much higher chance of finding an admirable celebrity doppelganger if I watched more television. I have a hard time getting into TV shows –will usually only give them a shot if I know they’ve got a couple of good seasons to fall into, and will throw a show to the wolves if the writing becomes lackluster for even a moment. I’ve never actually watched a single episode of Dawson’s Creek, even though I feel like I should, given the resemblance.

The most recent show I’ve fallen into – and am madly in love with is a show called… well, I’ll get there…

My new job, which I’m starting on the 19th, required me to be fingerprinted at the police station at the beginning of the week. I was escorted into a back room by a petite woman with short brown hair who looked a little bit younger than me who was wearing a large, “CRIME SCENE UNIT” jacket.

“Do you really work crime scenes, or are you just wearing the jacket?” I asked as she dipped my hand into ink.

There’s something about being fingerprinted that really just sparks conversation – maybe it’s that you wind up holding hands with a stranger for 10 minutes… or maybe that’s just me.

“Yeah, I work crime scenes,” she said softly as she pressed my index finger to a piece of cardstock.

“How is someone your age already a cop?” I asked.

“Not a cop,” she said, as she pulled back her jacket to show me her waist. “See, no gun.”

“Ah,” I said – nodding my head as she pulled my ring finger up to her face to try and see if there was something on it causing the print to smudge.

“So what exactly do you do… other than fingerprint money changers like myself?” I asked.

“I go to crime scenes – murders and stuff. I take pictures of pools of blood, I collect DNA off of weapons, stuff like that,” she says.

“Are you into any of the crime TV shows?” I ask.

“CSI is the dumbest show on the planet… but, have you heard of that show called Dexter?”

Ah yes – Dexter. That would be the show I’ve recently fallen in love with.

“I sure have,” I tell her, coolly. “That’s my favorite show right now.”

“Oh my god, mine too and I practically have his job!” she said, squeezing my hand with excitement, getting some ink on her palm.

“How far are you into the series?” I asked.

“I’ve seen every episode. Twice. What about you?”

“I’m working my way through season two.”

She nodded and said, “you’re all done. Come with me and I’ll show you how to get this ink off your hands… I’ve got some on mine too,” she pointed out.

As we stood together at a special sink equipped with special de-inking soap, she asked if I buy the seasons on DVD or just watch them when they’re on TV.

“I probably shouldn’t admit this in a police station,” I said, “but I just download them.”

She wagged an inky finger at me and said, “Well – if you end up getting arrested for piracy, I’ll make sure I’m the one to finger print you again.”

I’d have asked for her number if she’d told me that Michael C. Hall, the actor who plays Dexter, was my look alike. I had, however, no such luck.

CONFIDENTIAL TO MY READERS: Interested in web design? Like my blog? I screwed up the layout and broke Google Analytics and am on the verge of punching a stranger in the face. Email drobbins33@gmail.com if you're interested in helping out.

A Stranger’s Foray into Social Commentary

2010-03-31T20:56:00.000-07:00

I’m taking a one-post-break from writing about strangers. There’s been an issue in the news that has gripped my attention, has been at the forefront of my mind, and has been making me sad for a long enough time now that I think it has earned a post on Talking to Strangers.

On January 14, 2010, a 15 year old girl named Phoebe Prince committed suicide in her South Hadley, Massachusetts home. Her body was discovered by her 12 year old sister, which is horrific tragedy of its own, but the thing that is suspected to have pushed her to the edge was bullying. What type of bullying she actually experienced is not entirely clear – but, I’m going to give this girl benefit of the doubt that whatever it was she was going through was enough to push anyone into a dark, sad place.

Here’s what I do know. She and her family moved to the US from Ireland at some point in 2009, making her, “the new girl.” Though I only spent 3 days in Ireland myself, I was pulled aside and questioned by security for taking off my shoes in front of an airport metal detector – so I’m going to fancy a guess that the culture shock this girl was acclimating herself to made being 15 and starting high school significantly more confusing and scary than it is for us non-foreigners. All kids experience bullying to some degree, though unless they get uprooted and moved 3,000 miles during adolescence, not all kids go through the type of “new kid” bullying that comes from being just that - new.

A lot of the news stories that are providing real details of the situation are describing that she experienced things such as being forced to sit alone during lunch and not being invited to do anything after school or on weekends. The memories of spending a solid year eating lunch by myself in middle school is what tugged my heartstring enough to make me sit down and write this – but eating alone and being bored on Saturday aren’t enough to make a kid snap. But, as 9 students from Prince’s school have been charged as adults with a battery of felonies including statutory rape, criminal harassment, stalking, and “violations of civil rights,” it’s pretty clear that this 15 year old girl was subject to a lot more than being ignored.

I’m making a point here to not go into, “Where were the adults? Where were the teachers? Why didn’t anyone say anything?” because every newsman and blogger who has covered this story has already filled their graphs with those questions. They’re valid – but they’re not what I’ve been thinking about for the past three days.

My question is this – what message is being sent to children that causes them to silently let tears run down their faces while they let other kids bully them so severely that they see suicide as being their only option? I don’t need to ask where the teachers were – the answer is simple: they were elsewhere. I want to find out where this message of passivity is coming from, because I think that this is just as much a part of the problem as is the fact that teachers are clearly turning a blind eye to this kind of abuse.

My family moved to Arizona when I was 12, I was the new kid, and I got picked on a lot. I can’t say with a clean conscience, “my teachers ignored it!” because a few of them really stepped up to the plate and defended the new kids and the losers like me – but plenty of the others saw what was real and never said a word. In a report issued today by the superintendent of South Hadley High School, Gus Sayer, a handful of teachers and administrators have come forward and admitted that they knew what was happening to Prince, and did nothing. It has also come to light that Prince’s mother had met with two school officials to express her concerns, which were also ignored.

Prince was clearly doing what she could to ask for help – and her requests were going unanswered. And when her request for help were unanswered, she was left with nothing but herself. What concerns me so much about this is that kids are demonstrating that they have been sent a message that when you’re left alone with all of your problems, there is nothing more you can do.

When I was bullied in middle school, I tattled for a while – which made things worse. I tried to stay quiet and avoid conflict for a while – which accomplished very little except drawing much more spirited provocations. And then one day, a kid whose name I remember but will not mention came up to me during lunch. I was eating a slice of pizza and reading a book by myself at an empty table. When the kid came up to me, he grabbed the book out of my hands, and said “I’ll be taking this, fag,” and began to walk away. There was a teacher nearby who watched this happen – but didn’t move from where she was sitting. I though about tattling, and wanted to cry – but what I did was much more direct. I stood up, made my way up to the escaping bully who had given me plenty of grief in the past – and I punched him in the back of the head. He fell to the ground, I picked up my book, kicked him once in the chest, and went back to my table and my slice of pizza.

Not only did that particular kid never give me so much as a dirty look again, none of his friends did, either. None of his friends gave me any grief, and the other bullies who saw it happen or heard about it later regarded me with a new level of respect. Some continued verbally harassing me, but never pushed me in the hallway again. Others who had never bothered me before wanted to prove how tough they were by intimidating me, and I threw punches where punches were due. Fountain Hills Middle School was so efficient at turning a blind eye to this kind of violence that I only ever received one 15-minute detention for getting into a fight, which I told my parents was due to being late for a class. If I walked into room with a black eye and a known bully walked in behind me with a bleeding lip – the teachers would make eye contact with all of the other students for the remainder of the class. By the time I got to 8th grade, I had changed things for myself. Not only was bullying no longer a problem I faced, but I no longer had to spend time worrying about bullying and could devote some of this newly freed time to finding kids I actually wanted to hang out with.

I can only wish that this poor girl had had the idea, or the encouragement, or the cautious whisper of a brave adult, telling her, “go pick up a rock and knock that fucking bully’s teeth out, Phoebe.”

In our “post-Columbine” era – we’re so focused on preaching nonviolence that the only people who now have access to it are the malintentioned trolls who know that even if they can’t get a knife past the school’s metal detector, a fist can get through fine. Expulsions and lawsuits are so common that well behaved, smart kids are left with no way to defend themselves from criminal harassment and rape without fear of being denied entry to college, or fear that punitive damages will bankrupt their parents. Kid are standing idly as victims of violence because this “violence is never the answer” mantra painted on the guns of the school security guards are making them believe that it’s better to be beaten or raped then to risk a lawsuit or a stint in juvi in the name of taking matters into their own hands and defending themselves.

Unfortunately, it’s tough to teach angry, scared, and hormonal kids that an appropriate level of violence might very well be the answer without being seen as inciting a future school shooting. But, there was a day when school shootings didn’t exist, where lawsuits weren’t commonplace and fights happened. If we let our pets growl at each other when they try to eat from the wrong bowl, why is it so unacceptable to let a fist fly and a nose bleed when honor and integrity are on the line. I realize, we’re “not animals” and “shouldn’t act like them” – but if all we have to give our sons and daughters to protect themselves is D.A.R.E. class and rape whistles, then maybe it is time to step back from this pacifist approach to school yard bullying and encourage our youngsters to learn to defend themselves and take from the thieves what is rightfully theirs.

The Last Time I'll Say....

2010-03-16T11:20:00.001-07:00

This is the last time I'll have to say this...

"Because of federal regulations, I can't go into much detail about my job."

For reasons I still cannot go into on this blog, I am no longer working in the financial world... and, well, am no longer working ANYWHERE... for the time being, at least. I have a few really exciting prospects already on RADAR.

I have no real excuse for why it's been over a month since my last post - so I won't make one. I will, however, say that it's very unlikely that my next job will demand an equal or greater amount of secrecy than my previous employer did - and I'll probably be able to write about the strangers I meet at work once I actually get another job!

So sit tight, readers. Now that 60 hours of my week will no longer be veiled in secrecy, I'll have more content I'm free to write about... and hopefully some income in the next few week.

Peace be with you, homies!

A Very Special Valentine's Day Special!

2010-02-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

Today on Talking to Strangers, we’re going to divert a little bit from the usual rules – and tell a tale that is in fact, not about a stranger. It is, however, a true story, and one that conveniently for chronology’s sake, is about Valentine’s Day.

I’ll qualify this only by saying that before writing/publishing this post, I did check with the antagonist of the story to make sure that she (a) thinks this story is, in retrospect, as funny as I do and (b) wouldn’t mind if I publish it. So thank you for your approval, Alisha.

The year was 2000. I was in 8th grade. This was the year I joined the wrestling team, and quickly earned the reputation as least enthusiastic and least talented wrestler on the squad. (As opposed to my counterpart, Bobby Weinmen, who was no more talented of a wrestler than me, but had a distinct advantage in the enthusiasm category. He actually WANTED to pin people, whereas I really just wanted to go home.)

Not unique to 8th grade (or any phase of my life), I had a crush on a girl in one of my classes who occasionally said hi to me and even made eye contact from time to time. In 8th grade – that meant love, baby.

At this particular point in 8th grade, the girl who occasionally said hi to me and even made eye contact from time to time was a girl named Alisha. I didn’t really know TOO much about her, except that she liked horses, wore glasses, and that she had gone to a school dance with my friend Al which meant that, by extension, she was in my league. Oh, and I also knew that I was pretty sure that I might be in love with her, but that’s a given.

At this point in my educational career, I had already ostracized myself from the “cool” because I had let it slip that I liked reading books and writing poetry. Cool kids didn’t like books and poetry, they liked making out at the park and talking about the cars their parents were going to buy them in three years time.

However, there were many different echelons of cool. I was pretty far near the bottom, though there were a few kids lower than me that even I was allowed to pick on. But, being so close to the bottom, there were a few things that I could do to elevate myself in the eyes of the collective “cool.” Having a girlfriend was one of them, (beating someone up was another). It didn’t really matter who – as long as they were “as cool as,” or “cooler,” than me. If say, I, and some equally uncool girl started “going out,” the collective “cool” would grow suspicious of our motives and think we had discovered something cool about each other that they had missed. They would send cool-minions to scout our potential “diamond in the rough” status and eventually report back to the head “cool.” (This is similar to how athletes farm out offers from teams by starting rumors that other teams are interested. If they can create the illusion of desirability, they can artificially inflate their own market value.)

I’d like to say that my interest in finding a girlfriend was as tactful and socio-economically motivated as the scenario I just suggested, but really what it boiled down to was that, being a nerdy 8th grader who liked books and reading poetry, I had become aware of the emotional gamut of things John Irving and Jack Kerouac were writing about, and was hell-bent on experiencing them myself. At that point, I was limited to writing about NOT experiencing these things, and being pissed off at my lack of emotional exposure. I wanted to broaden my literary horizons! (That’s a lie. I really just wanted to make out with someone at the park.)

I had decided by the beginning of January that this particular girl in my class, Alisha, totally dug me, and that I was going to ask her out on Valentines Day. Waiting six weeks for Valentine’s Day to roll around seemed like a perfectly logical approach at the time. I mean, what kind of loser asks someone to be their girlfriend in January, for Pete’s sake!? What were you suppose to do, sneak a “Happy Groundhogs Day!” card into their locker with a piece of chocolate taped to it and, “will you be my girlfriend?” scribbled into the margins? No. That would be lame. Valentine’s Day was invented for a reason, damnit. I was sure of it.

As Valentine’s Day approached, I figured out what card I was going to give her, what chocolates to buy, and what box to put them in. (Only losers give girls chocolate in the “factory installed” box!) I told my buddies. They told their buddies. They told my buddies I should totally go for it. My buddies told me I should totally go for it. The day came ‘round and during first period, in Mr. Smith’s home room class where we did our official candy/card/whatever exchange, I managed to drop the card and the box of chocolates on Alisha’s desk while she wasn’t looking.

One of my buddies kept a lookout – waiting to see when she noticed the card. I certainly couldn’t be the one keeping watch – or everyone would figure it out. My lookout did a bad job keeping watch, and before he had had a chance to tell me she’d opened my card, she was walking towards me.

She walked up, handed me a note, I took it, and she walked back to her desk. Taped inside the note was an incredibly familiar looking piece of chocolate, and a few greatly anticipated words. “Yes I’ll be your girlfriend!”

Victory was mine! I was totally way cooler now. Now, the popular kids would simply ignore me – rather than pick on me! I would get to eat lunch at one of the indoor tables with my new more-popular-than-me girlfriend and her friends, rather than outside with my nerdy and single friends!

I went over and said hi a few minutes later, to signify that I had accepted her acceptance of my request. After that, I went back to my desk and exchanged a few high fives with my buddies. I was totally a cool kid now!

Later that day, the school herded us all to the theater for an assembly where they were going to show us one of those, “condoms cause AIDS, AIDS cause babies, and babies cause death,” videos which our abstinence only public school was so fond of showing us. Alisha found me outside the theater before the assembly and asked if I wanted to sit with her.

Being a cool, rebellious, and now girlfriended 8th grader, I busted out my walkman and shared my headphones with her so we could listen to Greenday’s new CD “Warning” together. Somewhere during the abstinence video, between “AIDS causes babies” and “babies cause death,” I noticed Alisha was writing something in a notebook. When she was done, she tore the page out of her notebook, folded it up and placed it inside the now-empty box of chocolates. This seemed a bit odd to me, but I quickly let my concerns go when she rest her head on my shoulder throughout the rest of the “babies cause death” –portion of the video.

The video ended promptly at 2:15, the end of the school day. The lights came on, Alisha hopped up from her seat, grabbed her pink backpack, and handed me the box. I quickly opened the empty box which was filled with crumbs, paper wrappings and the folded note. Inside, the note read, “I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore. Thanks for the chocolate. You can have the box back. It was very pretty. Sorry. – Alisha.”

Noooooooooo!!!!!!

And so, after only a few hours, my foray into being a girlfriended 8th grader was over. I found my buddies and returned the high fives they had given me that morning. Disappointed as I was, I was aware that I now held the title of being the one who had MOST RECENTLY had a girlfriend, and still had a partial crown to wear. We went over to somebody’s house that afternoon, played “Golden Eye” on N64, and talked about who we would all try to go out with NEXT.

I realize, even 10 years past this particular Valentines Day in 8th grade, this could come off sounding like a story written by a guy still bitter about something that happened 10 years ago. I’ve run into this particular Alisha a number of times since then, and even as we got older it was still always a little bit awkward when we’d see each other at parties. Hi. How are you. Eaten any good chocolate lately? Asked anyone out in a card lately? Subtle, yet unavoidable little jokes hinting, “So… this is awkward.”

But then, some time last year – Alisha and I were at a party together and someone asked how we knew each other. Without skipping a beat, Alisha said, “I’m the bitch who ate his chocolate and then dumped him on Valentines Day when we were in 8th grade. We kind of go way back.”

Ever since that evening, the story has been nothing more than a funny story, no longer anything awkward (even though we still tease each other about it every time we run into each together.)

So on that note, Happy Valentines Day everybody. And Alisha, I do believe you owe me a box of chocolates.

HAPPY VD EVERYONE!!!

Strangers Without Clothing

2010-01-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, January 30th 2010, your favorite Stranger Talking blogger will be the master of ceremonies, having the distinct honor to bring his two friends, Ross and Rachel, together in marriage. This post was written at the beginning of January, but was put on reserve until now... so without further adeiu, I bring you - Ross's Bachelor Party - or "Strangers Without Clothing."

This past weekend, New Years Eve weekend, was the weekend of my friend Ross’s bachelor party. Ross will marry my good friend Rachel at the end of the month. In case I have yet to mention this in a previous post (which I think is unlikely, as I like to mention this a lot), I have the honor of officiating their wedding. Writing the ceremony, performing the ceremony – I’m kind of the star of the show… minus that whole bride and groom thing, but they’re just going to stand there.

Anyway. This past weekend was Ross’s bachelor party. We had dinner at the Outback Steakhouse, went Go-Kart racing (which was simultaneously fun and frightening), and then went to The Great Alaskan Bush Company. A potentially subtle name, the GABCO is one of the many strip clubs in the Downtown Phoenix Industrial Quarter. (Downtown Phoenix doesn’t really have an “industrial quarter.” I made that up. It just sounds classier than referring to it as “that scary part of Phoenix where the I-17 meets Grand Avenue.)

Immediately upon entering the GABCO, my friend Eddie and I set out on a mission to get Ross up on the stage with a bunch of strippers to be ceremonially humiliated for “sending off party,” if you will. At one of Scottsdale’s clubs – I’ve actually seen strippers handcuff the guy to a chair, and proceed to draw all over him in permanent marker (among other things – which I’ll leave out because I know my mother is already cringing while reading this.)

A cocktail waitress tells me if I pay her $50, she can get Ross up on stage with four strippers of my choosing. I tell her I’ll be right back, and go whisper “give me $6 and don’t ask any questions” into the ear of the eight other guys who are there. No one complains. Apparently the devious smirk on my face was enough for them to invest $6 in my craftiness (or maybe they were just drunk.)

I summon my friend Eddie to come to the bar with me – so he can help me pick out the four strippers who will help make Ross a star.

We go to the bar, hand the waitress our fifty $1 bills, and I ask “so where do we see the lineup?”

“Lineup?”

“Yeah. How are we supposed to pick four if we can’t see our options?”

“Oh… uhh… I don’t know… do you know their names?” the waitress asks.

“No, I don’t know their names. After a while, cinnamon and ginger and anise all start to run together… can you describe them all?” I ask.

“Uhh… well, can you describe what you’re looking for?” she asks.

Eddie and I exchange a glance.

“Do you have a really short, German looking one with fair skin and wide hips?” I ask. Eddie laughs, as he knows I’ve just described the bride-to-be. The cocktail waitress says yes, and rattles off a few more choices. She tells us it’ll be a half an hour before Ross gets up on stage. We go take our seats and enjoy the show.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a very special guest here tonight,” the announcer said a bit later. “Where are you, you special f*cker? Stand up, Ross. Tonight is your night!” the guy yells. Eddie and I start hollering and wailing away, pointing to Ross to make sure everyone knows where he is.

Ross, being a gentlemen, gets up and walks to the back of the stage and goes up the stairway to where the strippers are standing. (This is worth noting because I’m sure 99% of other men, in this same situation, would have just grabbed onto the side of the stage and pulled themselves up. Myself included.)

“What the f*ck are you wearing, Ross?” asks the DJ. “Ladies – get him out of those clothes!” he says.

And so, like muggles under the imperius curse – these ladies spiritedly pounce on Ross. In a half second his belt is off, and his trousers are midway down his thighs (which is as far off as the pants go… for the record.)

With that – four potentially intoxicated strippers are now all trying to remove the last bit of Ross’s clothing that they’re legally allowed to remove. The four ladies are all pulling at his shirt in a scene that could have been straight out of a “Demotivate Us” poster under the heading of “Teamwork.” The four are pulling at the shirt’s tails and sleeves with all of the strength four intoxicated stripper can have. While this might sound like an effective way to undress a bachelor – there was one problem. They were all pulling in different directions.

So – at the beginning, Ross was standing idly like a good sport as he lets the dirty work of his friends plays out – but once the shirt is up and around his neck, Ross starts freaking out.

Or so it looked from my end.

Eddie and I have been laughing the whole time, though the laughter quickly turns to hysterical laughter with enough intensity to trigger both coughing and tears. Mike, the best man, turns to me and says “What have we done!?”

Here’s what we’re laughing at. The four strippers have Ross’s shirt above his head. No one can see his face – and then all of a sudden Ross is fighting the assault, rather than going along with it. Now he too is tugging at the shirt, flailing his arms, twisting and contorting and pulling with his entire body – all while the strippers are taking this as an cue to pull EVEN HARDER.

The possibility that Ross’s head is tangled up in his collar, and that he’s just trying to get himself free, doesn’t occur to me.

What crossed my mind instead is the idea that if he keeps flailing, he’s going to get an arm free and accidentally knock one of these strippers to the ground. Bouncers will swarm the stage, Ross will get arrested, and I’ll have to call Rachel and tell her that we lost her fiancé to the law. (And quite honestly – in that situation, I’d way rather be the one in jail than the one to call Rachel.)

Call me a terrible friend if you must, but this thought did nothing but make this all funnier to me. Would it really be a bachelor party if there wasn’t any trouble? I wholeheartedly agree.

The four strippers and Ross flailed together on stage for about two solid minutes. Finally, Ross frees his head. Everyone in the club, including the strippers, freezes. The crowd goes silent – the strippers take a step back, and everyone watches to see Ross’s reaction. After a moment – with a big smile on his face, Ross hoists his fists in the air, victorious. I was very proud of him.

The part where they danced for him on stage – which came next – was really suppose to be the highlight of the hazing but, in comparison to an uncoordinated assault – fear of impending arrest – our friend fighting a battle against cotton with denim around his ankles, and the victorious hoisting of the fists – the actual bachelor dance itself was pale.

After his moment in the spotlight, Ross got his shirt back on and came and joined us at our stage-side seats.

“My head got stuck!” he said before anyone said a word. Another roar of laughter and tears filled our little section. (Am I the only person on the planet who starts coughing when they laugh really hard?)

A few moments later, the stripper in glasses came up and asks me if I would like a dance. Glasses? Half stripper, half nerd? Sold.

As she starts her dance, she asks me, “so what do you think about the bride?”

“Actually, I knew the bride first. She introduced me to Ross.”

“Oh… well what do you think of Ross?”

“He’s a solid fellow,” I say. “But I have to like him, otherwise I couldn’t marry them…”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I’m the reverend doing the ceremony.” (This is true, for the record.)

Her jaw drops.

“I’ve never given a lap dance to a reverend before,” she said, in a seductive voice.

“There’s a first time for everything,” I say to her as slyly as possible.

She dances for a few moments and then asks, “So – what do you actually do as a reverend? Like, what does a typical day look like in your line of work?”

“Well actually,” I said, “the whole reverend thing is kind of a hobby… I’m a stock broker by day – reverend by night.”

“Shut the f*** up,” she says.

“Okay,” I say with a smile on my face.

“No,” she says. “Seriously. Shut the f*** up. You’re not a stock broker. You’re what – 25?”

“23.”

“You’re f***ing 23. You’re too young to be a stock broker.”

“Okay,” I say again, smiling. She still doesn’t believe me. She asks to see a business card – I tell her I don’t have any on me. (A mistake I will never make again when going to a strip club, apparently.)

“How are you a stock broker!?” she demands.

The song ends just as I start explaining this to her. Instead of getting up and walking off with the money I handed her, she sits herself down on my lap and waits for my answer.

Now – I’ll come right out and say that this would probably annoy the shit out of most guys. Talking during a lap dance, and expecting a conversation thereafter? Conveniently for both me, and the stripper (who insisted that her real name was in fact, “Twisted”), I am a huge fan of unlikely conversations with unlikely people. Nothing says “blog post!” to me like a completely naked 20 year old sitting on my lap, asking me about Modern Portfolio Theory and my feelings on the current state of the gold market in a crowded, candle lit room with heavy metal playing and alcohol being served five feet away.

I’m not even kidding – she asked about both modern portfolio theory and my current feelings on the gold market. Apparently, Twisted is getting a degree in economics. I called “bullshit” when she told me this (because every stripper on the planet says they’re getting a degree in something profound – though usually it’s early childhood development), but she actually knew what she was talking about.

I realize that purely by the length of this post, I’m implying that this story is “going somewhere.” Like we discover we went to preschool together… or that I took her home with me, or something even more scandalous! Roar!! That would probably make for more exciting reading than an intellectual conversation between me and a naked girl. But that’s quite not what happened.

Twisted and I sat and talked for a solid half an hour about the economy, my job, her job, blogging (she writes one too!), the pros and cons of using Blogspot vs. hosting your own blog, the fact that Google is clearly going to take over the world, a few mutual funds I think every investor should take a look at, why Tucson is better than Phoenix and the list goes on.

Talking to strippers in their natural habitat is an interesting phenomenon. This is not the first time I’ve had a long, post-lap-dance conversation with one. (It’s the fourth, if you’re curious…) They work in an industry where they are paid to be silent and naked. I will make the comfortable assumption that a friendly male being genuinely interested in what they have to say about the world is probably such an uncommon occurrence that they’re willing to sacrifice the opportunity cost of going back to work a little sooner. In exchange for the lost theoretical dollars, they get a few warm minutes of intelligent discourse with someone interested in something other than their body.

I know someone reading this somewhere is thinking “I’ve got to find out how he does that… how he gets them to sit on his lap and chat…”

The key is – you have to actually care. You have to actually want to know who they are. Just like I said in Boris and Ophelia… “friendship, trust and loyalty lead to nudity on a far more consistent basis than do alcohol and sexual aggression.”

Seeing Seeing Strangers Strangers

2010-01-18T20:34:00.000-08:00

I’m usually really happy with the titles I give my posts. This one is bothering me – has bothered me since I first started writing it – and will probably continue to bother me. The general rule to “include the word Strangers in the title,” makes it tough to name things sometimes… but I think it’s a good rule. Some of the titles simply can’t fit the word – such as Davey and the OB/GYN – but most can. This one can.

See – here’s the problem I’m having with this post. It’s not that the word, “strangers,” doesn’t fit… it’s that I don’t think any title really fits the story I’m about to tell you… yeah – I know – I keep having really profoundly significant things happen to me, don’t I?

That is… if you consider seeing double at a grocery store a profoundly significant thing… I know, the suspense is building.

Another general rule for the writing of this blog is that I don’t write about meeting, “new people.” For example, I met a guy who goes by the name Bandrew the other night. He was a stranger when we met, and our evening was interesting enough to write about – for sure – but we’ve already chatted a few times and I know we’ll hang out more. If I write about that, this blog becomes nothing more than PG rated Fratire.

Writing about women I meet at the grocery store, or Target? Gray area. My little heart of hearts always hopes I’ll run into them again and that I WILL get to know them. I’ll say something charming about how I have 300 Beanie Babies in storage, they’ll ask if I want to come to their place and watch Homeward Bound – and heavens to Betsy, how embarrassing would it be if after a passionate night of PVC pellets and Michael J. Fox she found out I’d written a BLOG about her the night we met? (Actually – in that scenario… she’d probably find it really endearing…)

I digress!!! Roar!!! (Roar?)

Recently, I’ve been chatting with a woman who works at the grocery store. Quick sense of humor – engaging in conversations – knows what aisle bacon is on. These three things make up the body of my criteria. (And this post definitley fits into the category of "gray area." I'm aware.)

Instead of impulsively and unsmoothly asking her out for a drink the moment she agreed to lead me to the bacon – I took what is a slightly new and refined approach for me, and decided to try to get to know her a bit PRIOR to bringing up that whole “out” concept. (You know – go out, make out, strike out? I try and avoid the word “out” entirely when talking to women. It’s a habit I found useful when the idea of “going out” was a huge deal in 4th grade, and have stuck with it.)

I won’t say her real name, but for this story I’ll call her Liz (after Jon's object of affection in the Garfield series). We’d had about three conversations over a few weeks. I’d grown more and more interested in her, but still wasn’t getting the “date me” vibe, and was looking for an opportunity to ask some probing questions without really asking. Shortly before New Years, I saw a golden opportunity. We were chatting in the bagel section and I asked, “who did you get to spend Christmas with?”

“I spent it at my parents house with my boyfriend. It was really nice.”

Asking without asking: 1. Her having a boyfriend: -1.

This was right before New Years…

Yesterday*, I saw her again. As we’ve built some rapport and I genuinely enjoy talking to her – I said hi and we started chatting. We spoke briefly about our respective New Years Eves, and I asked if she could show me where the mustard was.

We got to that aisle and she began pointing out a few.

“That one is good, that one has been recommended but I haven’t tried it… and I haven’t really heard anything about that one,” she said, pointing to my personal favorite.

“You know,” I said, “I was actually afraid of mustard as a child… and that’s my favorite one… so it’s probably, you know – top of the line if even I like it.”

“Mustard, really?” she asked, covering her hand with her mouth and laughing.

“Oh yeah. No idea why. I was afraid of my parents shower too… but that’s because it was big and blue and dark, I think.”

“I was afraid of butterflies when I was a little girl,” she told me. This time I was the one to laugh and ask, “really?”

“Yes, really!” she said. “Have you ever looked at a butterfly up close? The antennae they have look like needles! I thought they were killers in disguise! Like Trojan horses with wings!”

“Well, it’s just as rational as being afraid of cockroaches, I guess…” I told her.

“Or mustard," she said.

“No. Not mustard. Being afraid of mustard is stupid – yours had a reason, at least.”

And then – she walked by us… while we were talking in the mustard aisle… Who walked by? The girl I was talking to. That’s who. What? That doesn’t make any sense. I know it doesn’t. What can you possibly be saying?

They’re twins. There are two of them**. They both work at the same grocery store. Twins.

I can tell them apart. I thought she had gotten a haircut between the time I spoke to her after Christmas and the time I spoke to her yesterday. No. There are two of them, and this time I was talking to the other one.

Ultimately, this means that the one with the quick sense of humor, who is engaging in conversations with long hair has a boyfriend… but the one with the quick sense of humor, who is engaging in conversations and has SHORT hair is totally possibly not OFF the market!

Oh yeah, and she can lead me to both the bacon AND the mustard.

I can only think of one thing to say here, and it is a quote of Sacha Baron Cohen.

“Great success!”***

Notes:
*: This post has been in the works for a little while now. "New Years" was topical when I brought it up. We've chatted a few times since then... I'm still working on that whole "getting to know her a bit" thing. I weighed the option of making this a much longer post and giving more details about our subsequent conversations - but decided that would toe the line of "creepy" far more than the line of "cute."
**: I'm not actually sure if they're twins... I've seen them talking - and by golly, they sure look freaking identical, but I'm beginning to doubt my snap genomical judgement. (That's right. Genomical. Having to do with the genome. I made it up.)
***: I reserve the right to pull this post the moment I have any reason to believe she knows about this blog... If she reads this - she'll know about the Beanie Babies... and will most certainly try to steal them!

The Arnold Palmer Story

2010-01-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

In light of my previous post, I have one more story I would like to tell from my days as a server at The California Pizza Kitchen.

This is, in fact, one of my all time favorite stories. Most of my friends have heard me tell it in person – and many of them will request that I tell it when they introduce me to new people. I’ve heard people ask me to, “tell the Arnold Palmer story,” but my friend Rachel simply calls it, “the story.” Regardless of where we are, what we’re talking about – or who we’re with… if Rachel asks me to tell, “the story,” I know which story to which she is referring.

I have had a note written at the top of the word document for this blog stating, “write the Arnold Palmer story when it becomes relevant,” since I first launched this blog, now over a year ago.

I never write posts about something that happened a long time ago unless I can find a way to directly tie it into a recent post or theme. I have wanted to tell this story since the beginning, but didn’t want to break that rule.

But now, I don’t have to because Lauren, the woman who I said goodbye to in my last post, was there when this story took place…

I spent four months filling the position of “worst server in history,” at California Pizza Kitchen, location #88 in Scottsdale’s Gainey Ranch when I was 19. People walked out on tabs, left me with $0.00 tips, and complained to my boss about me on a regular basis. I knew by the end of my sixth week that the phrase, “don’t quit your day job,” did not apply to me. The second in command manager, a guy in his 20’s named Will, actually pulled me aside one day to tell me, “Heather was about to fire you last night – but I talked her out of it because we know you’re going back to school and leaving here in two more months… so just be aware that you’re on thin ice with her…”

First, I noticed that on more and more of my dinner shifts I was being assigned to the patio, rather than the dining room. Then my dinner shifts began to taper off all together and I was only working lunches… first in the dining room and then again onto the patio. Even though our “patio” was enclosed and air conditioned, it was still oppressively hot – given that whole “desert heat” thing. The patio was CPK purgatory – it was where they sent you to wait tables while they were waiting for you to go somewhere else.

One day – right around the two month mark – I showed up for a lunch shift and found out that I was actually going to work the dining room for a change. I had no optimistic thoughts of, “this is my chance to prove myself!” Instead, I pulled Lauren aside and asked not that she help me manage my tables, but that she simply, “bring it to my attention should spontaneously catch on fire in my station.” She arranged to switch from station 6 to station 5, so that she could better keep an eye on the beverages I would inevitably forget to keep filled in station 4.

It was a Sunday morning, which meant the church-crowd would be coming in for their post-worship lunch. This was usually our busiest lunch shift, where families came in at 11 a.m. to order “Goldfish Pizza” off the kids menu for their youngsters, and alcoholic beverages off the grown-up menu for themselves.

Three of my five tables were already full when the hostess seated an elderly couple at table 46.

“Hi folks,” I said – a habit I had learned a few weeks back after being scolded for addressing tables as “hi guys,” and offending all of the “gals.”

“My name is Dave, I’ll be taking care of you this afternoon. Can I get you both something to drink while you take a look at the menu?”

“I’ll get an Arnold Palmer,” said the man, gruffly.

“And for you?” I asked his wife.

“I’ll get an iced tea with a little bit of lemonade,” she said.

“Oh… that’s actually what an Arnold Palmer is, what… what your husband ordered,” I said politely, and in the same spirit in which I would tell parents how much caffeine was in Mountain Dew when they would order it for their kids. People usually seemed pleased when I was able to teach them something new at the old CPK.

“No,” the woman said. “That is NOT an Arnold Palmer. An Arnold Palmer, which my husband ordered, is an ice tea with lemonade. What I ordered is an iced tea with a LITTLE BIT of lemonade. There is not a golf related name for the beverage I have come up with.”

Yes, people USUALLY seemed pleased when I was able to teach them something new. However, well… you see that this was an exception.

“Oh,” I said cheerily. “Well I’m sorry for the confusion. I’ll be right back out with one Arnold Palmer and one iced tea with a little bit of lemonade.”

As I prepared the two beverages, I gave Lauren, who was assembling a tower of bread slices for her 8-top table, a quick recap of “the crazy lady at table 46.” She laughed and told me I should consider myself lucky she hadn’t ordered some obscure and detailed alcoholic beverage.

I headed back to 46 with the drinks as she tried to balance a few more packets of butter onto her plate.

“Alright. Here we are – one Arnold Palmer,” I said as I put the drink down in front of the man. “aaand one iced tea with a little bit of lemonade.”

As I started to walk away, I heard the voice of the woman say, “excuse me, sir.”
I turned around.

“This is actually not what I ordered,” she said.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“Yes. I actually ordered an iced tea with a little bit of lemonade. You brought me an Arnold Palmer,” she said.

Before I had a chance to react, her husband banged both of his fists on the table.
“God damnit Sharon!” he shouted.

The entire dining room froze. All 152 of our guests, plus everyone waiting in line for a table went silent. Glasses clinked as they were placed down onto tables. Forks and knives were dropped beside plates. Lauren, who was walking by me at the time, stopped so abruptly that her tower of bread slices went tumbling to the ground.

“Everywhere we go,” the man continued shouting, “all you want is this minimalistic control bullshit so you can terrorize everyone we meet!”

All of the other servers stifled laughs and scurried off of the scene so they could release their outbursts without looking unprofessional. Lauren left the bread for dead and escaped to the kitchen through two swinging black doors.

“This is fine!” the old man yelled. “Everything is just fine!” now shouting at me. He stood up and took out his wallet.

“No, really – this is fantastic,” he said – pulling out a $10 bill and throwing it towards my face, but letting it land on the corner of the table next to his wife. “Just fucking fantastic! We are going to drink our beverages and eat every bite of our food without another word of complaint! Isn’t that right, Sharon!?”

“I would like…” she started to say, furrowing her brows and glaring at me.

“No, you wouldn’t!” the husband interrupted. “The young man brought you your drink and YOU WILL LIKE IT.”

“No! I want,” she said.

“HE IS BUSY WITH HIS OTHER TABLES! SEE? THAT TABLE OVER THERE IS WAITING FOR THEIR FOOD BECAUSE YOU’RE WASTING HIS TIME. DRINK YOUR FUCKING ICED TEA THING. IT’S A GOD DAMN ARNOLD PALMER. YOU INVENTED NOTHING.”

The threat of laughter started creeping into my cheek muscles. No matter what I did – someone was going to be unhappy, and I knew I would ABSOUTELY lose my job if I started laughing here… so, following the suit of Lauren and the others – I spun around and headed towards the kitchen.

I left the $10 bill on the table. I was afraid Sharon would bite off my hand if I let it get too close.

I walked through the swinging black doors, shaking my head, and with my whole body shaking with silent laughter. Lauren was catching her breath and wiping tears away from her eyes when I walked in.

“Please,” she said, still in hysterics. “Please tell me that that yelling didn’t just happen because of something you did.”

I doubled over with laughter at this point.

“No,” I tried to say. “Well. Kind of. I mean – no, not technically. Not directly, at least.”

The $10 bill remained on the corner of the table untouched for the rest of the meal – and even still after they left. It served as my tip for a $19 credit card payment of two half salads, one Arnold Palmer, and one “Beverage: Other.”

The Death of a Stranger

2010-01-02T13:01:00.000-08:00

When I was 19, I worked at California Pizza Kitchen. I was terrible at it. The people skills I had down, but the organization involved in being a waiter was a skill I never have, and never will possess.

This was also the summer that my parents began their divorce proceedings. My girlfriend of a year and I had just split up, and I was adjusting to a home of two houses. It was a long and lonely summer.

My experience at CPK was both good and bad. Being aware of, and constantly reminded by my boss of how bad I was at my job did nothing for my stress levels nor emotional well being. I did, however, befriend a few truly fantastic people who also worked there.

During my second week, I got yelled at by both a customer and my boss in the same five minute span for taking too long to bring someone their food. This was already becoming a common problem for me, as I would simply forget to put their orders into the computer. I snuck outside to calm myself down, and a moment after I heard the door swing shut behind me it swung open again. I looked up, startled, expecting to see the infamous Heather chasing me out to yell at me some more. But I had not been followed by Heather. I had been followed by one of the other servers who was working at my adjacent station. A beautiful woman, one year older than I, named Lauren Love.

She came over, threw an arm around my shoulder and said with the warmest smile on her face, “some people just get so uppity when you forget to put their order in!”

This was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Lauren helped me pick up my own slack for nothing in return. She helped bus my tables, helped keep drinks filled. All I had that I could give her in return was thank yous – and she took them gracefully.

We began eating lunches together every so often. I opened up to her and told her about my parents divorce, and how hard it was to adjust to two bedrooms and two refrigerators. Where she could relate from similar experiences in her own life, Lauren would offer wisdom and advice. Where she couldn’t relate, Lauren would offer hugs and purloined tortilla chips. We would frequently eat a quick snack together, munching on things we could grab from the kitchen without being seen, during slow times of the day.

Lauren and I lost touch after I quit my job at CPK, communicating via Facebook only every so often. There is the saying that a friend will come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Lauren came into my life for both a reason and a season. She gave me courage during my parents divorce – and she was the person I looked forward to seeing at work for 4 months of my life.

I found out this morning that Lauren is no longer with us. At the age of 24, Lauren lost her life to a blood clot – something she had been struggling with for years, though I had never been aware.

The thing that has struck me the most profoundly about Lauren’s death is that though I learned of her death this morning – she didn’t die this morning. She didn’t die last week, or last month – Lauren died on May 1st.

I have looked at Lauren’s Facebook page many times since May 1st. As a friend, I spent hours this morning wondering “how did I miss this? How did she die 8 months ago and I haven’t realized it until this morning?”

Facebook is a curious beast – capable of keeping someone alive, even after they are long since dead.

The reason I have been unaware of Lauren’s passing for so long is because her loving friends have continued to communicate with her, and her family, through her Facebook page. It is not uncommon at all that when someone dies – their page become a memorial to them. This is, in essence, what happened. However, instead of simply writing goodbye’s and “RIPs” – her friends have continued with normal wall posts… writing Happy Birthday Lauren in September, and Merry Christmas Lauren in December. People have written to her quick blurbs such as, “I wish we could go see Up in The Air together,” or simply a message as short as “I miss you, Lauren.” They have written inconspicuous notes of friendship that don’t for a second imply that someone is gone - but simply not there right then.

So, while on May 1st it would have been very clear that this was the page of someone who just passed, today it looks like the page of someone who is very much alive due to the love and dedication put fourth by her friends. I have sat here this morning, reading through the eight months of hellos and goodbyes with tears running down my face. It is, quite simply, one of the most touching things I have eve seen.

It is bizarre to me that we live in a time not only that you can learn of a friend’s death via Facebook – but that the tool which can be the bearer of bad news can also be the thing that tricks you into believing that they are all still with you.

I am so sorry, Lauren, that your life was cut so short. Even in the short few months I had the pleasure of schlepping pizza by your side – I grew to admire and respect you in a way I have only respected a select few others. I have thought of you often, and will continue to do so. You were a bright star in my life, and you will continue to shine for as long as I can remember you.

Lauren Virginia Love
September 27, 1985 - May 1, 2009

Ageless Strangers

2009-12-30T21:30:00.000-08:00

Tonight, my friend Ben and I had agreed to watch a football game at my place, and have some pizza and beer.

We stopped at Magpies for pizza, and then Circle-K on the way back. After grabbing a six pack of Rolling Rock and another six pack of Dos Equis, I went up to the counter to pay. The woman, maybe in her early 40’s took one look at me and said, “you’ve got a pretty cool brother, don’t you?”

Shocked, thinking to myself “unless this woman is some super-hacker working at a Circle-K as an alibi or something – she can’t possibly know who my brother is, NOR figure out that I’m related to him in a split second.”

Instead of showing too many of my cards, I stuck with “huh?”

“Oh honey, you’re not even 17 yet! It’s alright, I’ll still sell to you – you look enough like him. What’s your real name, anyway?” she asked.

I told her that despite my apparent babyface, I was in fact Dave Robbins.

“Sure you are – Dave,” she said winking. “You weren’t really born in 1986. What's your real name anyway? You look like a Michael.”

“So I bet if I told you that I’m a stock broker – you wouldn’t believe that either, would you?”

“Oh honey!” she said, letting out a roar of laughter, as she handed me my two six packs and said “I can help you sir,” to the man standing behind me.

Black Strangers

2009-11-27T12:47:00.000-08:00

Black Strangers

Oh… oh jeez. That title is just asking for trouble. But, Black Friday Strangers doesn’t quite have the same rhythm to it… you know… penta rather then tetra. Oh man, now I just sound like a literary nerd.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG!

My Black Friday Adventures were brief. Despite the apparent benefit to stimulating the economy by purchasing things in tangible stores, I still rather do 900% of my shopping online where the prices are better and I don’t have to leave the house. As such, I was only in Arizona Mills for about an hour.

As I was walking back towards Exit-4 where by I had parked my car, a man standing near a kiosk was clearly trying to get my attention.

There were four people by said kiosk, and I couldn’t see the surface or what it was selling. One of them was a petite, very cute woman, who was talking to two really tall military guys in fatigues. The last of the folks was a non-American looking fellow, who was trying REALLY hard to get my attention. Doing a statistical analysis in my head, I decided the Kiosk was a military related thing. The two guys in fatigues were trying to recruit the cute girl, and the guy waving his hands in my direction just happened to be near it, but was not affiliated with it.

Through his thick accent, I finally caught what he was saying. “Where did you get that bag?” he was asking – pointing to a leather bag I was carrying. I told him where I had purchased it, how much it cost, why I needed it… this might have been the most brilliant Kiosk related sales pitch ever, as he got me to stop walking and engage him in a conversation before I even realized he was INDEED working at the kiosk.

He told me his name was Mizel. He had achieved his US Citizenship just under a year ago, after growing up in Israel and fighting for the Israeli army. The selling point of this wasn’t the tie to my Jewish heritage, but the fact that this poor guy had come to the promise land to work a mall kiosk on Black Friday… the poor bloke CLEARLY hated his job. It made me morbidly reminiscent of the days when I worked at the front desk of a gym – sliding people’s membership cards without so much as a hello.

So, effectively, he had gotten me to take the bait, set the hook – now all he had to do was reel. I still had no idea what he was selling, but he and I both realized now was the time for that to change.

“When was the last time you washed your hands?” he asked.

“Uhh… bout an hour ago?”

“How often do you wash your hands?” he asked… he then asked what kind of soap I use, if I use lotion, how often I exfoliate. The moment I heard the word exfoliate, I knew I had just broken away from the line and was swimming away victorious… but, he seemed happy to have someone to talk to, so I stayed and chatted.

He asked about my job. We talked about finance, the economy, how I got into my profession – all that stuff. Meanwhile, he kept putting salt on my hands and telling me why salt PARTICULARLY from the Dead Sea was awesome, and all of the nutrients I was taking into my skin at this very minute. Every thirty seconds or so – he sprayed my hands with a water bottle, a dash of this and spritz of that. He kept asking how my hands FELT, if they were refreshed or spiritually invigorated. I told him at one point my fingers were burning, because I regularly gnaw on my cuticles and salt getting into open sores didn’t feel good. He asked me to imagine how good my hands would feel if I didn’t make a habit out of gnawing on myself.

So, we were approaching the end of this little experience. Every time he sprayed my hands, he held a little bowl underneath them to collect the water. When we were finally through, he pointed to the water and said “what color is that?”

“Kind of gray,” I told him.

“No no. It is VERY gray,” he said. Kudos to you, enthusiastic salesmen.

Now, before I go further – I would like to point out that I am very familiar with this dead sea salt stuff, as my ex-girlfriend Carolyn used the stuff religiously. To its credit, and hers, her skin was irrationally soft… but, I vividly remember her and me once having a conversation about ME using the stuff, and her concluding that she wouldn’t want to date a man who spent as much time exfoliating as she did. Point remembered, sale lost.

“You said you washed your hands about an hour ago?” asked Mizel.

“Yes.”

“And they were still this dirty?” he asked, with a look of genuine concern on his face.

“Yes.”

“Does that bother you? Wouldn’t you like to know that this extra dirt was off your precious skin?”

“…no, not really.”

Sales 101 – don’t ask yes or no questions when trying to close a sale.

“…well, for only $199 – you can purchase a 2 year supply of this dead sea salt,” he said, discouraged.
“Yeah… uhh… I’m not… really interested.”

“Do you mind if I ask why?”

“Well – I don’t really care if my hands are THAT clean,” I said.

“But… do you see value in having them be THIS clean?”

“Well, Mizel… you’ve shown me value – sure… but you haven’t shown me how I will lose MORE THAN $199 if I DON’T buy your product.”

“I don’t follow…” said Mizel.

I didn’t really explain it to him… I figured I’d let him think about it on his own. But I did make him a promise.

“How’s this sound – when I have more money than I need, and a girlfriend with insufficiently soft skin – I’ll come find you, alright? I promise.”

He smiled.

“Have a nice holiday, sir.”

And a nice holiday to all of you, my loyal readers!!!

Holy, Airborne Strangers!

2009-11-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

I went to New York City last week to visit my sister Maggie and meet my future brother in law, Jeff. I had a blast.

The trip home was exhausting. I got to LaGuardia, just in time to find out my flight to Atlanta had been canceled. I pushed, elbowed and sacrificed all dignity and kindness I saved up in my karma bank, and got to the #2 spot in line at the re-booking desk. They got me on the next flight out, but wouldn’t move my connecting flight to a later departure – saying I would still land in Atlanta a whopping nineteen minutes before my flight to Phoenix left.

A few moments later – they announced that my new flight would be delayed by a half hour, landing me in Atlanta eleven minutes after my connection was suppose to leave. I got back into the ticketing line and explained that NOW they needed to put me on a later flight.

Instead of giving me a new ticket – they put me on a “safety flight.” I was still booked on the flight I would miss by eleven minutes, but also had a ticket for a flight leaving 2 hours after that. Fair enough.

My flight to Atlanta landed early – and I had six minutes to get from the end of B-Terminal at Atlanta Hartsfield to the other end of A-Terminal. This involved a long run, a subway ride, and another long run.

The door was closed when I ran up to the gate – but a woman manning the desk saw me running up and yelled “Phoenix?”

“Yes!” I yelled. For some reason, this kind woman got on a radio and said “we’ve got one more,” entered the code and opened the door for me so I could get home on time.

Everyone was already in their seats. Flight attendants gave me unpleasant looks – passengers were none to pleased. I sat down in my seat and, after running some outlandishly long distance with a suitcase and a camera, then coming to an abrupt stop – immediately thought I was going to faint.

Trying to… ya know… not faint… I sat forward and rest my forehead against the seat in front of me.

“Are you okay, my son?” asked the man sitting beside me.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just out of breath,” I said, as we lifted off the ground.

After regaining my composure, the ability to breathe oxygen without seeing spots, and had stopped sweating like a mall-Santa, I opened my eyes to find that the airplane I was on had free satellite TV in every seatback, free Wifi, and free interactive games on the TVs. If the recession has done only one good thing – it has made companies desperately court our love by providing us with free things like TV and Wifi.

The man sitting next to me, who had asked if I was okay – was playing a trivia game. On the bottom of his screen, it said that 46 passengers were playing, and he was in second place with 4,000 some odd points.

He looked to be in his late 60’s, was playing by the name F-Joe, and was within a few points of taking the first place crown from the top competitor, playing under the name BALLSMOUTH.

Question 18 was about President William Howard Taft, question 19 was about Super Bowl 10. F-Joe got both of them right. BALLSMOUTH missed the one about Taft, but nailed the super bowl question.

Going into the 20th and final question, F-Joe and BALLSMOUTH were tied. F-Joe wiped his forehead, and held his right hand directly in front of the screen so he could poke the answer as soon as he read the question.

The question popped up on the screen. It said, “Which character in the hit TV Show South Park dies in every episode. (A) Eric Cartman (B) Kyle Broflovski (C) Stan Marsh or (D) Kenny McCormick.”

Without hesitation, I shot my hand out and poked D on F-Joe’s screen. He turned and looked at me and said “is that one of your favorite shows?”

“Hell yes,” I said. He laughed and watched the screen eagerly, to see if I’d actually given him the right answer.

Sure enough, I had. Both F-Joe and BALLSMOUTH had both answered the question correctly – but due to my catlike reflexes, F-Joe’s answer was clocked a half second before BALLSMOUTH’s, earned a few extra points, and F-Joe was therefore the smartest man on the plane.

He did a fist pump in the air, thanked me and said, “but, I didn’t really win. You got that last one for me.”

“Call it divine intervention,” I said, shrugging.

F-Joe let out a good, hearty laugh and said “Oh, I know all about divine intervention.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked.

“Oh yes. I’m a priest,” he said – pointing to his priest-collar thing.

He called me “my son,” when I was panting myself back to existence, he played by the name F-Joe… and he had on the collar. Also, I noticed in his seat pocket was a book called “Why Does God Allow Evil?”

I immediately felt uncomfortable for making the “divine intervention,” joke – and knew my life long dream of being a detective had been shattered.

“How did you know I wouldn’t get that one right?” he asked, mocking offense as he pointed to the screen.

“It was the kind of questions where you either know it immediately, or you don’t know it,” I told him.

He asked me to tell him about South Park, saying he’d heard of it but didn’t know anything about it. I told him, in the best way I could, what South Park is all about.

“But that one kid dies in every episode? How does he come back?”

“That’s not the kind of detail South Park spends too much time worrying about,” I said.

He told me he thought this was ridiculous, but said, “I’ll make a note of taking a peek if I ever see it on.”

Ffffffooooorrrreeeeeeshadowing. Satellite TV. Late night flight.

Sure enough, within a half an hour – Comedy Central was playing South Park.

I have yet to decide if I think this is a good thing or a bad thing – but the episode playing was indeed NOT “Red Hot Catholic Love.” Instead, it was “Spookyfish,” the episode from season 2 where a killer goldfish comes to South Park, and Cartman gets transported to a parallel universe. This is not only one of my favorite episodes, but one of the episodes I found appropriate enough to show my mother when she asked me to, “show her that South Park show you and your friends were laughing about last night.”

I nudged Father Joe, who had thankfully paid the $2 for headphones, and told him if he put his TV on channel 14 – he could see the elusive show that had won him the honor of smartest man in flight.

Watching a catholic priest experience South Park for the first time vividly reminded me of watching my older brother explain “The Internet” to my 94 year old grandmother. More confusion than anything, with two tablespoons of “what is this world coming to,” and just a dash of “back in my day!”

Father Joe asked what I do for a living, I told him I work in investments and gave a brief description of my job.

He chuckled and said, “you don’t LOOK much like a stock broker!”

I smiled and told him, “you probably wouldn’t look much like a catholic priest if you’d just about fainted while running through Atlanta Hartsfield to catch a flight you had 6 minutes to board.”

Father Joe thought about this for a second and said, “well – that’s why we wear these,” he said, pointing to the collar, “even in our darkest days, we’re still easy to spot.”

We had an hour left of the flight and were making small talk. Here was my opportunity to ask a catholic priest anything and not have to worry about the long term effects of seeming rude or just foolish.

Politeness overrode my desire to ask him if he had ever had sex, so instead I asked what he did on the 6 days of the week where he wasn’t preaching.

“Oh – I do more than you think. I have to write the sermons, visit the sick, perform weddings, funerals, sometimes on the same day! I eat dinner with converts, convert strangers while they eat dinner, it’s a full life… and of course, you have to find some time for yourself,” he said.

“What do you do for fun?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said quietly, “I try to be modest, but I can whoop the choirboys on that X-Box.”

Scruffy Scottish Strangers

2009-08-26T11:03:00.001-07:00

As some of you know – I have been home brewing this summer. Making my own alcoholic beverages – safely – at home. (After one failed attempt to make rum which ended with me probably almost dying 55 times – I’ve decided to stick to cider. It’s easier, it’s safer, and it’s more fun than frustration.)

Tucson has a store called “Brew Your Own Brew” – with a little sign in front that reads BYOB (an acronym used at parties where you are requested to “Bring Your Own Booze.”)

It’s a great store. They have everything you need to make anything alcoholic. Despite my dislike of the owner – it’s a FANTASTIC store, great prices, they’re good at teaching you things – it’s just what I need to make tasty beverages on my own and not explode.

The first time I went in there – a young guy was working. I told him I wanted to get “the bare necessities required for making alcoholic apple juice.” He sold me everything I needed for $21 – telling me all of the other things I would EVENTUALLY need (which I did end up buying about a week later) but I was pleased that there was no pressure involved. I told him what I wanted – he sold me a bucket, an air lock, and some champagne yeast.

My brew of alcoholic apple juice was everything I wanted it to be. Bitter – strong – home made. Tasted like death before adding sugar – but you didn’t have to drink much to not need another drop.

My second batch – which I’m going to start tomorrow – is set to be a little more sophisticated. I’m going to PROPERLY sanitize everything before using it. (Just because the bucket is CLEAN doesn’t mean it’s set for cider brewing, I learned.)

I’m going to flavor it with some berry juices – cinnamon sticks – and… well – that brings me to my story.

One of the things “Brew Your Own Brew” advertises is that you can call them any time and they’ll help you over the phone. I’ve utilized this very much. Today when I called – it wasn’t the guy who helped me get the equipment to make alcoholic apple juice – it was the actual owner. A scruffy, slightly disgruntled Scottish man who likes it when you make alcohol RIGHT.

“So – I’m going to add some honey, for flavor,” I say over the phone. “Do I need to boil it first so it’s thinner?”

“Wait wait wait,” says Scruffy Scottish Man, “I’m sorry – I thought I heard you say at the beginning of the call you were making cider. What exactly are you making?”

“Uhh… cider,” I say.

“No – you’re not. If you’re making it with honey – it’s not cider.”

“Okay…” There’s a long awkward pause. “So uhh… what I’m wondering is if I need to boil the honey to make it thinner before I add it.”

“Well it depends upon what yer makin!” says Scruffy.

“Uhh – cider.”

“Well – it’s not cider at all if they’re honey in it!” he said.

“Yeah – no, I got that,” I said, growing frustrated, “so – I’m making a … beverage… and wanted to know if I’m going to add honey to it – do I need to boil it down first.”

“Well it depends upon what yet makin! What do you mean by beverage?”

Another long pause on my end.

“Look – I’m sorry – but if you’re going to call and ask for my expertise I’m going to give it to you!” he says. Understandable.

This went back and fourth a few more times. Do I boil the honey – it depends what you’re making – you’re not making cider because you’re a stupid American – it depends what you’re making – do I boil the cider?

Finally – I just said “Thanks!” He continued trying to explain and I went into, “I understand! I appreciate it, thank you!” until he stopped talking.

After I got off the phone with him I realized he still hadn’t given me an answer.

I'm just going to boil the damn honey...

No Stranger to Late Fees

2009-08-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

I pay bills late. If I'm not penalized by a late fee - I'll probably pay it a few days late... almost on principal. Credit cards, rent, stuff where bad things happen if I'm late - 93% chance I'll pay it on time.

Cell phone, health insurance, usually a few days late. I should probably work on that... though I'm not really sure why, because nothing bad happens if I’m late… and therefore there is no incentive to pay on time.

Such is the case… normally.

I've been meaning to pay my health insurance for a few days. And by few days I mean... ehh about 6 weeks. As of TODAY (so I have been informed) there was an 8 week grace period. If it was due July 1st, you could pay it up until the end of August without any problems. And because of this, I usually did just that.

So, amidst gnawing on ice cubes and not being productive I decided this was probably the time to call The Man and give him my money.

"We're sorry to inform you sir but this account has gone into termination,” the woman says. (Errr passive voice. What does “going into termination” even mean?)

“What? I have until the end of August to pay for July!” I inform her.

“No sir. Our new policy no longer gives you the 8 week grace period.”

“When did this new policy go into effect?” I ask.

“Today.”

“So uhh… can I… get it back?” I ask.

“Yes, sir. Once your account has been terminated, if you pay the full balance due, we will reinstate the policy and make it retroactive to termination,” she says.

“Oh… so can I just do that now?”

“No,” she tells me.

“Why not?”

“Your account has not yet been terminated,” she tells me.

“What… you… you said it had been terminated,” I tell her.

“No sir – I said it had gone into termination,” she tells me. I squint my eyes real tight and try to figure out what this bastardization of the English language actually means.

“So… once it has BEEN terminated… I just call this number and pay my bill?”

“Yes sir,” she says.

“Why can’t I just pay it now?” I ask.

“It’s against our policy, sir.”

“That’s a stupid policy… fine – when will my account BE terminated?”

“By Friday. You can call on Monday and get this taken care of.”

Mmm.. Yes… all of a sudden, I realize why the republicans are fighting so hard to keep this system in place. It works so well!

UPDATE: My mom called me as soon as she read this to scold me for "paying things late on principal." My moral compass has been realigned!

Eastside Strangers

2009-08-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

Contrary to popular belief – I, like most men, get nervous when talking to pretty girls.

Now, I have friends who get REALLY nervous when talking to pretty girls. Paralyzed with fear, make an ass out of themselves (and not in a cute way) nervous when talking to girls. I’m not that bad. If I have an opening to start the conversation – I’m golden. It’s really just starting conversations from scratch that I get nervous attempting… I mean, it’s hard!

I guess if that’s my only problem – I don’t REALLY have that big of a problem. There are, after all, entire books dedicated solely to starting conversations with girls.

Anyway – I’m getting sidetracked. (Squirrel!)

I was just in Target. I needed three things. Hangers, 9V batteries and tooth paste. The latter two were right by the door – so my quick trip in was already narrowed down to finding hangers in a Target the size of a hangar.

I wandered around a little bit and somewhere between garden supplies and children’s shoes I decided to ask someone. I saw a red shirt puttering around in children’s shoes and pushed my cart towards it. (They were out of hand baskets...)

“Excuse me,” says I.

“Yes?” responds the Targeteer – who turns around. And with that, standing before me was one of the most stunningly gorgeous women I’d ever seen. About my age, long brown hair, vibrant eyes.

“Uhh… uhhh…” I say. “Where are… hangers?”

“Oh, they’re just down there on your left,” she says, tossing the hair out of her eyes and pointing.

“Oh…” I say – looking down the isle.

I return my eyes to hers and think, “Ask another question! Tell her you like cats! Recite renaissance poetry!”

“Okay… thanks,” I say.

She goes back to puttering in children’s shoes. I walk towards the hangers.

“Blast!” shouts my inner thoughts. I try to forget about the pretty girl in shoes and find appropriate hangers.

I see some that look made specifically for holding a shirt and a pair of pants – but they’re labeled “dress hangers.” Can a man use those for a shirt and a pair of pants? I see one that looks like it would hold just a pair of pants – but it says “skirt hangar.” Will that work?

I realize that this is my perfect opportunity! Well, sort of. Walk back to the other side of the store to ask the pretty girl if I can hang my pants on a rod made for dresses? I can see that coming out wrong – or her realizing I walked from the other side of the store to ask a question about dress paraphernalia. I leave that idea on the rack.

With my hanger-hunting complete – I head towards the register, deliberately passing children’s shoes on the way out. She’s still there – organizing things and being unfairly pretty. A few more pick up lines that would have worked in second grade run through my head. “I have 300 beanie babies in a storage locker! Want to come over and watch Homeward Bound? I’ll make chocolate milk!”

Nothing promising…

On a side note - I want it on record: if a woman came up to me and asked if I wanted to watch Homeward Bound – I’d hear wedding bells off three feet above my head.

Ladies? Take note.

As I am unloading my cart onto the conveyer belt - I am startled by the voice behind the register. Sadly, it was not who we all wish it had been – no. It was DARTH VADER. That’s right folks – this economy is bad enough that James Earl Jones works at the Target in East Tucson. You heard it here first!!! (Suck it, Perez Hilton!)

Okay, not really – but this guy’s voice was so deep and he enunciated every syllable so dramatically – and so slowly – it was like his whole purpose in life was to sound just like Darth Vader.

I almost giggled when he asked, “did you find everything alright?” I was waiting for him to ask if my name was Luke and tell me he was my father. He let me down.

So – after meeting my future wife but failing to get her number and executing a cash transaction with The Sith Lord – I dreamily walked through the parking lot to my car… not exactly looking where I was going – and quite literally bumped into a woman… maybe in her mid 40’s.

“Is your last name Jameson?” she asks – without even acknowledging my ‘excuse me!’

“Uh… no…” I say.

“What year did you graduate high school?” she asks.

“2005…” I say.

“Oh… you look just like a guy I went to high school with… but I graduated in ’83,” she said, as she walked away.

And all I went there for was tooth paste, hangers, and a couple of 9V batteries…

Twittering to Strangers!

2009-08-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

Hi Readers!

Talking to Strangers has a twitter page!!! Hooray!!!!

The username is TTStrangers

You should tweet me... or twoat me... whatever the past tense is. Tweeted? Twarted? Twoot? Twooted? Twooned?

Strangers Without Kittens

2009-08-03T00:37:00.001-07:00

It went something like this.

I’ve been moving into a new apartment for roughly the last week. I spent the evening over at my old place. From 5-8 I was cleaning my old room and bringing things to my car. From 8 until about midnight, my old room mate was hosting a “Dave is going away” dinner party. It was a lot of fun.

The most important thing I went to the old place to retrieve was my cat, Bread. I wanted to leave him there, where he is comfortable, until I was settled in at the new place to make the transition as easy for him as possible.

So at midnight, I loaded the kitty – with a bunch of clothes and boxes in my back seat, and we headed off.

Half way home I pass a cop sitting on the side of the road with his lights off. I was going a bit over – maybe 7 over – not quite speeding but not quite safe, either. He doesn’t start rolling as I pass – instead, he waits for me to get a quarter mile down and then ZOOMS up behind me.

This is 24 hours after I was pulled over for my license plate being expired. (It officially expired on July 31st. Today is August 2nd.)

I’m also tired. I’ve had nothing to drink, but immediately start worrying that this is going to end in a field sobriety test. While I have no concern that I’ll end up getting arrested – field sobriety tests can easily take an hour.

Sure enough, the cop who has come zooming up behind me flicks on his lights. I pull into a parking lot, roll down my window, turn off the car, pull out the keys, and hold them out the window. One of my ex-bosses was a cop, and he told me to do this – and said it makes the cops more comfortable knowing you won’t throw the vehicle into reverse, slam into them, and try to run.

No good evening, no how are you, the first words out of his mouth are “why are you holding your keys out the window?”

I explain this to him, he looks as though he’s never heard this before – and moves right onto “do you know why I pulled you over?”

“My license plate is expired… I got pulled over about that yesterday,” I say.

“It is?” he asks.

Bread moves into full force meowing at this point.

He tells me that my license plate light is out – and if the plate is indeed expired, that is also a reason I have been pulled over.

He asks for my license, proof of insurance, and registration. I hand him the license and insurance, and inform him that not only is the plate expired, but I seem to have misplaced my registration. (Which is – sadly – true.)

He shines his light into the car, into the back seat and onto the cat, who lets out another long wail.

“You moving?” he asks, noticing the 25 shirts on hangars, two suits, and a pile of bedding.

“Yup.”

He goes back to his car. When he returns, he shines the light right on me and says, “I still haven’t decided if I’m going to give you a ticket or not. Why isn’t your car registered?”

I explain that I never got a letter in the mail. I was informed the day before that my plate was expired, have been moving, and haven’t had time to go to the DMV yet. I leave it at that, last time I tried to defend myself using numbers was the time I was held up for an hour reciting the alphabet backwards and blowing into a tube over and over and over.

“What is your cat’s name?” he asks.

“Bread,” I say.

“Brad?” he asks. “That’s MY name!” says the cop.

The amount of times someone has mistook the name Bread for the name Brad is innumerable. The amount of times that I have corrected the person and informed them that I named my feline after a food rather than a person is also innumerable. This time, however, I decided to let the officer believe he and my meowing cat shared the same name. I looked up at him sheepishly. He shined his flash light back in my face.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll let you and Brad go – but I’m putting in the computer that you’ve now been pulled over for this twice. If it happens a third time – you’re getting a ticket,” he says.

“That sounds fair,” I tell him. Bread lets out another moan.

He smiles, hands me my license, sticks his head in the window and says in the most childlike voice you can imagine, “Good night, Brad.”

Boris and Ophelia

2009-07-28T12:43:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store. The lady asked if I wanted paper or plastic. I chose plastic… the end.

I’ve been so busy studying for my first license that my normal, exuberant, stranger talking has been on hold a bit. For that reason, I’ll bend the stranger’s only rule and share a story with you I had with two friends. The one at the butt of this joke never reads this blog, so I’m sure he won’t mind – and… well… if the other one minds… I’m sure they’ll call me when they read this.

So – the other day – I was talking with my friend Boris. He is telling me a tale of debauchery and ‘almost’ getting with a girl. This ‘almost’ ended at skinny dipping, which he most certainly thought would lead to more.

I listen sympathetically, and he asks if I’ve ever gone skinny dipping with anyone. I tell him I have, and rattle off a list of names of friends I have done such nakedness with. Most of them are mutual friends, though one on the list, Ophelia, he’s only met a handful of times.

“How drunk do you think I would have to get Ophelia before she took of her clothes in front of me?” he asks, about my very shy, modest friend.

“'I know this will be hard for you to believe,” I tell Boris – a man who learned everything he knows about women from The Tom Green Show, “but I have found that friendship, trust and loyalty lead to nudity on a far more consistent basis than do alcohol and sexual aggression.”

Boris tells me I’m lame and changes the topic.

I can’t resist sharing this story with Ophelia. I send her a text at work and tell her what I just told you.

She responds, “Eww!!! Why does he want to see me naked? He doesn't even know me!"

"Because you’re gorgeous... and that's all that matters for... well... most men... I won’t lie… myself included."

Ophelia says, "Eww. Tell him the odds of him seeing me naked are equivalent to the odds of him shooting a bullet out of the air, with a much smaller bullet, while riding blind folded on a horse."

“I'm not telling him that," I say.

"Why not?" she asks.

"Because the last thing this world needs is for Boris to go out and buy two guns and a horse."

"That wit of yours - that's really what got me naked in the first place!”

Moving

2009-07-23T19:24:00.001-07:00

I'm calling various truck rental companies to get prices on trucks for my move next week. (I'm moving furniture down from Phoenix. Yay pay-per-mile.)

Budget offered me a truck for 2 days for $115 plus tax, plus a $20 gas coupon.

U-Haul offered me a truck for 2 days for $119 with no gas coupon.

I figured I'd call Penske too, just in case.

"Well, we can guarantee you the low price of $399 plus mileage... would you like is to go and set that up for ya?"

I tell the woman the information I just told you. She says, "Oh, well aren't THOSE delightful prices."

"Yes. They are," I say.

There is a long awkward pause.

"Well... I can't compete with those prices but I can compete with their service!" she says.

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah..." she says.

There is another long awkward pause.

"Well... you have a good rest of your evening," I say.

Looks like I'm not using Penske.

Solitary Strangers

2009-07-19T23:16:00.001-07:00

Hi readers,

Sorry I've been slacking! Training for the job = time consuming and I've been spending my days studying in coffee shops. The only people I've really talked to are other Series-7ers who see my text book and come strike up a conversation, or women I decide I should go introduce myself to. Unless you have the fortune of being those women, you don't get to hear my A-Game.

But!

The other night, I was at a ritzy restaurant in North Tucson with a friend of mine. I went off to use the bathroom - single person bathrooms. Doors made of frosted glass, legit towels to wipe your hands on, the whole nine yards.

Someone was in it when I walked up, so I waited patiently. A minute later, a woman not much older than me walked out, fixing her hair as she walked out the door. I looked at her, a bit confused, and then waited at the door another second before going in.

And, as I waited, a guy, maybe 40, strolled out, looking quite proud of himself.

Tehehehe. I know what THEY were doing!

More stories when I have time to be socially aggressive!

Uncrafty Strangers

2009-06-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

I was sitting here writing a blog post - thinking to myself, "What the hell am I even talking about?"

And then my phone rang.

A little back story. I am moving on August 1st. I have decided with the upcoming job and a respectable income heading my way - I want to get a place of my own. I have never lived alone before - and think it will be good for me in multiple ways.

I started the apartment hunt a few weeks ago - have reviewed many online and visited two. I had every intent to visit more than 2 - but #2 kicked so much ass that I no longer feel visiting more is necessary.

I visited both 1 and 2 on the same day - within 10 minutes of each other.

I had a meeting scheduled with my boss - and wrote the time down wrong. After waiting for him for a bit, someone came and asked, "what time is your meeting at?"

"It was suppose to start at 11," I told him, around 11:40.

"Yeah - I just checked the calendar. You're not scheduled until 1."

Well I felt like a dummy.

I announced to my colleague that I was going to take this opportunity to go look at a nearby apartment. He says he'll see me at 1.

I got to the place I wanted to see and was greeted by a young lady who gave me the tour did a tour and chatted me up the whole time. Her name was Kelsey. She was very sweet, and did a good job selling the property - but the PROPERTY didn't do a good job selling the property. Not very clean, tiny units, not enough windows. It wasn't terrible - but there was nothing that made me say "Oh! I want to live here!" I was pretty sure this would not be my new home.

After the tour, she took me into the sales office and asked me with the enthusiasm of a Girl-Scout-Cookie vendor, "would you be prepared to sign a lease and put down a deposit right now if we offered you a 10% discount on the rent?"

"No," I told her, casually.

"Is there anything we could do to get you to sign today?"

"I'm not willing to live in an apartment which can only generate tenants by paying them to not consider the competition," I said, matter of factly.

Young Kelsey looked shocked. She scrunched up her nose and broke eye contact for a moment, trying to decide if I had just insulted her. Then her face lit back up - as if she all of a sudden realized my description of their move in special was more accurate than she really wanted it to be.

As she was pulling together some promotional papers to give me, my phone rang. It was the receptionist of a different apartment complex. I have no memory of giving anyone my phone number - but will believe the evidence presented to me.

I told them I was "in a meeting" and would have to call them back.

I realized after calling them, on my drive over, that it was less than a mile from my office. It had grass, trees, and not a single homeless person sleeping in the parking lot. They take me into a unit, and though I don't know the exact square footage - it is very clear that for $20 a month more than the other place, it is more than twice the size.

Lots of windows - a working fire place - washer and dryer in unit. A Porch. A large enough bedroom to make the swinging double doors seem appropriate.

"And we're having a special right now," the tour guide told me. He explains that it is not contingent upon me signing today. I didn't sign right then and there, wanting to give it some thought and consider some other options - but have decided that I will sign on Tuesday when I head to that part of town for our weekly training seminar.

End of backstory.

As I was sitting here, writing a post about our air conditioner breaking last week - my phone rings. It is Kelsey. She asks how my job is going, trys to be chatty. I am polite, but know she is calling to see if she can get me to come in and sign today. I have had this phone call with other apartments before - as well as people trying to sell me credit cards.

"Have you signed a lease for an apartment yet?" she asks.

"No, I have not," I tell her.

"Well I am calling to tell you that if you come in and sign TODAY we can offer you X, Y, and Z!!" (I don't remember what she offered me this time.)

She tells me that this is a one time offer, only if I come in today.

"No thanks - I think I found another place where I'm going to sign next week."

"Oh - well, do you mind if I ask what led you to make that decision?" she asks, trying to sound as cute as possible.

"Sure. It's roughly the same price, roughly twice the square footage, the crime statistics are better, it's closer to my office than your property, and it has a washer and dryer in the unit."

I can only imagine that at this point - Kelsey made the same face she did when I told her I wasn't willing to be bribed.

"Well," she says, dropping the cute tone. "I am glad you found something so perfect!"

"Thanks. Me too," I say. Kelsey is not pleased.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?" she asks, as if I had been the one to make the call.

"Uhh... nope... I think we covered everything."

"Have a great day!" she says, using the cute-voice one last time as she hung up the phone.

Windblown Strangers

2009-06-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try and describe this as best I can...

On a recent drive from Phoenix to Tucson, I stopped at a gas station. I don't know if my car is losing its ability to drive in a straight line - or if the I-10 has just been exceptionally windy on the last few times I've made the drive - but no less, I decided to pull over a little after the half way point to get something to drink and take a little break from being a sober man driving an apparently drunk car.

I got off at the exit for the "Arizona Nut House," which - tragically - is a large store that sells all kinds of nuts, rather than a mental hospital on the side of the highway, next to a prison.

I have never been inside the Arizona Nut House, and decided not to change that fact on this particular trip. I didn't want to take too much of a break from the drive - but simply get a Coke and call a friend to tell them the joke I'd spent the last half hour thinking of, ("My car is getting blown around like Eliot Spitzer!")

There is a service station on the other side of the frontage road which had a big neon "Open" sign that I headed towards. Next to the entrance is a porto-potty sitting on a trailer with a sign on the door that reads, "for customer use only."

I enter the service station and find a scene I was not expecting.

This is a normal sized service station - walls lined with shelves and shelves in the middle of the floor - with the normal assortment of food, beverages, motor oil and other things you would expect to find in a service station.

This service station was totally normal except for one small detail. With the exception of beverages, the shelves only contained one of everything. One Hershey Bar, one Butterfingers, one bottle of 10W-30, one bottle of mouthwash. Everything was lined up perfectly against the edge of the shelf with a few inches of space in between each item. One of everything - but it seemed to my untrained eye that nothing at all was missing.

There was an old woman sitting at the counter, next to a 1980's style cash register (not quite fully analog, but definitely not the more modern things they have at newfangled grocery stores these days.) She was listening to the radio - but more than that she was STARING at the radio. I wondered what it was she was seeing.

I went up to pay, and as she gruffly pulled my Coke and Butterfingers out of my hands to check the price tags, I said, "Windy day today."

"Oh yeah!" she said, clearly glad to have someone talking to her. "It was blowing my car all over the place! I saw a tumbleweed the size of a cow on the way here into work this morning!" she said.

I peeked over the counter as she gave me the excited description of how large this tumbleweed actually was. I wanted to see where the stockpile of backup candy bars were - or if I had in fact just bought the one and only Butterfingers bar on this side of the Arizona Nut House.

"How far away from here do you live?" I asked, since she had volunteered the information that she had to drive at least some distance on the I-10 to get to work.

"Oh," she said - pointing towards the far wall, "I live about 20 minutes that way."

Had she pointed towards me, I would have assumed she lived in Marana. Had she pointed towards the back wall, I would have assumed she lived in Casa Grand. But as far as I know, nothing behind the wall she pointed to resembles anything even close to "civilization." 20 minutes that direction would have been nothing more than 20 minutes into barren desert.

Then I remembered seeing the porto-potty on the trailer - and the possibility that she actually did live 20 minutes that direction became frighteningly plausible.

Blue Strangers

2009-06-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

This morning, I went to Best Buy with Ross and Rachel. We had breakfast at a place near the Biltmore called Hava Java - and headed there afterwards so they could pick up "The Sims 3." (I didn't know The Sims 3 existed - I've been so busy being excited that my new laptop can run the Sims 2!)

Once in Best Buy, I realize that they probably sell a few things I need as well. With money I received as graduation presents, I've purchased two different lenses for the camera my dad gave me as a graduation present (which also came with a lens).

This puts me in the market for 3 "UV-Filters," which is just a fancy photo term for scratch protector. As Best Buy sells fancy cameras, I figured they might have the accouterments to compliment such fancy cameras.

As I'm wandering through the camera section, an old woman approaches and asks "Where are cell phone batteries?"

I look up, scan my surroundings and don't see who she's talking to.

"YOUNG MAN!" she says, now clearly talking to me. I look at her.

"WHERE DO YOU SELL CELL PHONE BATTERIES, YOUNG MAN?"

"I don't work here," I say.

"What?" she asks.

"Nope," I say, realizing the confusion. "I'm just wearing a blue shirt."

She looks down at my chest and realizes that, while I am indeed wearing a blue shirt - there is no yellow hexagon on my shirt.

"You shouldn't wear that shirt in here, it's confusing," she says - realizing that she had yelled at me for no good reason. She's smiling at this point.

"Mam, you know your shirt is the same color as mine, right?" I ask.

"Well... but..." she says, looking embarrassed. "No one would think an old lady like me would be selling electronics!"

"I had faith in you," I said. "I was even hoping you could help me pick out a camera."

Life in T-Town

2009-06-18T20:39:00.001-07:00

Sorry there's been a lapse in posting. Here is the problem I've been facing.

I read some really awesome blogs. They are probably written by people getting paid to write them, or at least have some source of revenue coming FROM them - but that's easy to disregard when it's time to compare my work to theirs.

In our blog-focused classes, we were taught that a good blog needed PICTURES and COLOR and SOUND and LINKS and all sorts of STOOF! (Yes - I spelled it that way intentionally.)

But PICTURES and COLOR and STOOF takes time. Davey in the Land of Scrap Metal easily took me four hours (at least half of which was spent making that drawing which, I'll admit, isn't that awesome.)

So I've been stuck between hard rock and a place! Do I only write posts when I have four hours to devote to photographs, writing, original drawings? About six weeks ago I decided "yeah... this blog has to be awesome. Nothing will go up without being 100% awesome!"

I have kept that promise. I have not posted anything in the last 6 weeks that was not 100% awesome. However, the downside to me keeping this promise to you, my dear readers (who I have probably lost all together, at this point) is that I haven't posted ANYTHING in the last six weeks (My "Commencement" thing doesn't count.)

So now I'm at the question of "Do I give up blogging because I don't have time to make it 100% awesome - or do I accept that my life has too many things happening in it right now to produce 100% awesome?"

This is where I hear Eric Cartman in my head saying, "But Mom!!!"

I miss writing for an audience. I miss reading comments and having people mention things I've written when I see them in person. That's the coolest part about it - having someone say "I really liked that!"

And come to think of it - no one has ever been like "I loved the picture! Didn't read the story, but that was one hell of a picture!"

So - this blog will not be the 100% awesome multimedia blog I had hoped it would be - but it will be about talking to strangers, dammit, and THAT is what I set out to do.

Moving onto the next agenda item - I posted my "commencement" note a few days before accepting a job. I am glad I didn't come right home and blog all about it - because APPARENTLY I can not in any way identify myself as my future position until I am licensed to be that postition. I also cannot identify myself as working for the company who 'will be' hiring me, again until I am licensed.

Here is what I can tell you. The three licenses I am currently in the process of earning are the Series 7, the Series 66, and the Arizona Life and Health License. It is a national company with an office here in Tucson - which will allow me to get myself established without having to move, and in the future will allow me to move to anywhere in the country without having to find a new job. (Wyoming, here I come!)

My boss is awesome. He made it very clear from the first interview that he wasn't willing to hire anyone who he didn't think would be wildly successful. Working for someone who both believes you will, and wants you to be successful is such a nice change from working in the back of a bakery where the boss-man frequently reminds you "you are replaceable, and no one will miss you." (I hate you, Jeff.)

So that's what I've been up to. That's whyI haven't been posting much, and I am going to leave it at that - because this blog is not, "Dave's life story blog." It's Talking to f-ing Strangers!

Commencement

2009-05-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

I have graduated and have a job. More to come - much more to come.

Strangers with Skills

2009-05-03T20:51:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

I have been out strangered by a stranger - a stranger with greater talking skills than I could parry.

Well… not really. I don’t even know if it’s possible to out stranger a stranger. How would that even work?

I bought a gym membership. Against my will, I swear! Well… okay, again – not really.

The UofA provides their students with access to their “world class” fitness facility – the place I used to work – which is also the source of every ringworm outbreak the university has seen since the 70’s. You could probably catch polio from touching one of they’re stretch mats without pouring bleach on it first.

As a graduation present – UofA stops giving you access to this world class infection the moment you graduate. I’m cut off on the 16th.

So, while cruising around 1st Avenue tonight, I decided to stop in at LA Fitness. This gym is built DIRECTLY next door to my old apartment – and while it’s not quite my neighbor anymore, it’s still damn close.

I promise, this is not about to turn into a, “I just bought a new product so I’m going to shamelessly advertise them,” blog.

The selling point that got me was that they offer boxing classes. I was a member of a boxing gym for a few months before going to England. While it was awesome, it was Oh-Damn-Son! expensive. I can get the gloves back on and continue, as well as do normal person workouts, with the added bonus of not catching ringworm.

When I got home, I started explaining this to my friend Ben over AIM. As I was typing something out – I noticed that boxing goes from 5:45-6:45, and yoga starts at 8.

“Ben!” I said to him.

“Yeah? So. Boxing and then yoga, so what?” he asks, after I explain this.

“Ben! Boxing = becoming a badass. Yoga = finding a wife. I can home in on my badassness from 5:45-6:45, and then get married at 8! I call that a good day!”

Ben was greatly amused.

Davey in the Land of Scrap Metal

2009-04-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

I have been busy, recently. You may have noticed – simply from lack of posts.

My overwhelming amount of busy started with my car. There has been school stuff, freelance work, computer problems, an over seas visitor… but really it’s been because of my car.

The long story – which seemed to get longer and longer every time I told it, is really that I needed to get my transmission and clutch replaced. It took a while just to get someone to tell me this and the whole ordeal required two garages, two different parts stores, a tow truck driver named Earl and 10 days with a rental car.

Twas expensive, but if it makes my car run for another year – I’ll call it a bargain.

Not that I’m a financial expert – but I figured with a new transmission costing as much as it did… an old, broken one had to have SOME value. In the end, it turned out I was correct. An old, broken transmission has some value.

I picked up my car at the garage last week. The Stormy Mobile was ready to roll! The garage told me that since I had provided my own parts for them to use – they had left all of the old parts in my trunk. I didn’t quite get the logic to that – WTF am I going to do with a dead transmission and a rusty clutch, thought I.

This is where I drew the conclusion that the old parts must be worth something. I got home from the garage and decided to test my luck on Craigslist, see what kind of bids I could draw. I put up the following listing:

I know nothing about cars. MY car just had its transmission replaced. Something went wrong with the old transmission. I don't know what, and I don't really care. My most immediate concern is the old transmission is now in my trunk, which is preventing me from going grocery shopping. It's freaking huge. Look at it this way, if you don't buy my old transmission I'm going to starve to death. Do you want that on your conscience?

It's from a 2003 Hyundai Accent, manual transmission. The car had 119,000 miles on it before I replaced the transmission. Fix it, sell it for parts, sell it for scrap metal, use it as a paper weight, put it in a Tiffany's box and give it to your girlfriend - this transmission holds a world of possibilities... possibilities which are currently in my trunk... this is an offer you and I both know you can't refuse.

I don't know how much it's worth - but if you're looking at this add, you probably do. Call me and make me an offer, and get it the hell out of my trunk. I'll even bring it to you if the offer is good enough. (So... ya know... add $1 to what you had in mind and I'll bring it to you.)

I put this add up at about 11 p.m., and had such high hopes that I even turned my ringer off when I went to bed – worrying some transmission-deprived individual would call me at 3 a.m. to put in an offer.

This was not the case. No transmission-deprived individual called me at 3 a.m., or ever, actually.

Meanwhile, this transmission WAS sitting in my trunk, and while it wasn’t LITERALLY preventing me from grocery shopping, I was limited to buying only the amount of food that I could fit in my front seat.

After a few days of no phone calls from Craigslist – I decided I’d take my OWN advice and sell it for scrap metal. This idea would have never occurred to me had it not been for the recent media coverage about people stealing elevator cables and selling them to junk yards.

Google informed me that Tucson has a number of such buyers – one relatively close to where I take my sign language class. As I have to drive down there twice a week anyway, I figured I’d stop by on my way home.

I pull up to the place simply called “Scrap Yard.”It looks like this.

I hop out and tell the incredibly large man that I’ve got a transmission in my trunk to sell. In broken English, he tells me to pull my car around and back into the loading dock.

I’m backing towards him – and though he is very spiritedly directing me, my car is so low to the ground that I can’t see his hands.

“Mas!” he shouts to me, as I’m inching back slower than necessary.

“Mas!”

A few more inches.

“Okay man, good!”

Three large guys come over and grab all of the and put it on a scale.

While it’s on the scale, someone comes over and asks for my drivers license. The guy takes it and holds it under a black light – like they do at bars, to make sure it’s real. He slides the magnetic strip through a card reader, hits a few buttons and picks up a phone. He reads the information off to someone, takes a good hard look at the picture, a good hard look at me, then hangs up.

“Here you go man. You’re clean.”

Thank you?

They direct me over to a window where I will “do the next step.” Mug shot and right thumb print.

“Lose the glasses,” he says gruffly.

The only other time I’ve had to do a mug shot and fingerprints was at to get my student visa to live in England for 6 months. They let me keep my glasses on though.

“Okay man, you’re clean,” this second guy says.

They send me back over to my pile of car parts.

“Alright man, we got this all weighed out. Bout a hundred pounds a sheet aluminum – gets you three seventy one.”

Glory hallelujah, thinks I! $371!! That’s almost a months worth of rent.

He hands me a sheet of paper to sign – and I see it written.

$3.71

Full jaw drop. Laughter.

“Are you f***in serious?” I ask, still laughing.

“Yeah man – sheet aluminum aint worth much. Used to be worth more. Aint worth much now.”

I sign the form. What else am I going to do? Demand they load 100 pounds of useless metal back into my car and drive around with it like something better will happen?

They hand me a receipt, and direct me to the cashier.

“Excuse me, mam,” I say to the woman behind the glass.

“I think I’m going to need some help getting all of these bills out to my car,” I say slyly as I hand her my receipt. “You got a minute?”

She scowls, not finding this as funny as I did.

“Here you go,” she says, handing me 3 crumpled up dollar bills and, two quarters, two dimes, and one penny.

Of course, $3.71 isn’t even enough to buy a cup of Starbucks – but I will find a way to spend that money well – and honor the 10,000 miles I drove on that used transmission.

Naked-Pacers

2009-03-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

There are people in this world who enjoy strutting around naked. When I was little – I ran around naked so much that Maggie truly believed I would grow up to be a nudist.

In fact – most of the blog posts I have written have been composed from the comfort of my boxers. It’s only 3:40 p.m., I have yet to need pants!

But some people go beyond sitting around in their boxers because they haven’t needed to leave the house. I don’t know if the same goes for women – but if you spend much time in a men’s locker room, you’re bound to encounter that one guy who practically does laps around the room completely naked.

It frequently takes me three trips down to the kitchen just to get a glass of water. Either there’s something on the TV that catches my attention – or I forget I’m thirsty and get a cookie instead, or something. I wander around the apartment constantly. I pace around when I’m on the phone – I pace around when I’m bored.

I don’t, however, pace around the locker room naked. I am submitting this as evidence that the men who DO so – for no apparent reason – are doing it deliberately. Being someone who LOVES to pace around aimlessly, I have never once gone more than a few feet from the locker without at least a towel.

The naked-pacers fall into two categories. They’re either in INCREDIBLY good shape or they’re really, really over weight. The former I can understand a bit more than the latter – mainly because they usually make a few stops in front of the mirror on their circles around the locker room. You don’t have to be Freud to figure that one out.

Naked-pacers do not travel in packs. They are lone wolves on patrol with their little soldier. Because of this, they’re usually not talking to anyone. Silently, stealthily weaving in and out of the rows of locker – going no where – completely naked.

But it was just the other day when I encountered the first, talkative naked-pacer of my stranger-blogging career.

I overheard a loud cell phone conversation from behind a row of lockers. A low voice was booming, “you get him back on the phone and ask him exactly who he thinks he is. Ask him what he thinks his f***ing place is!”

You tell ‘em, boss!

As I was changing out of my swim trunks and back into clothes – I noticed the voice was getting louder. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw the source of the voice…

You will notice an illustration on your right of what I saw next.

Not only on the phone, but on a blue tooth. Strutting his stuff through the day-lockers, in a big mean voice, meaning business – completely naked.

“You ask him exactly who he thinks he is!” he said again.

Talk about a perfect example of how you're suppose to imagine your competitors.

As he demanded this of the person on the other end – I had a moment to think about the scenario. I wondered if this guy had asked himself that same question. What job could he possibly hold that would deem it necessary to have this conversation, at this exact moment, in his current state?

Who does this guy think he is?

As he walked past me, blue tooth in his ear – one more question ran through my head.

Where the hell is the phone that is receiving the Bluetooth signal currently located?

Secure Strangers

2009-03-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

Every Thursday – I go over to Ross and Rachel’s for dinner. We usually have something healthy – like Taco Bell – but on one occasion Rachel convinced me to drive half way to the ocean to pick up Carl’s Junior. (Never again, Rachel! Never again!)

We eat our healthy entrees, sip Sam Adams and… most importantly – watch The Office. I won’t lie to you, faithful reader, there are few things in life greater than looking at Pam Beesley while salivating all over a Crunch Wrap Supreme. Oh man… is it Thursday yet?

(On your right - you see what comes up in the Google Image Search when you search for "Jim Halpert + Sam Adams." I'm not sure how it relates... feel free to comment suggestions on how this makes any sense.)

Last week – upon arriving at their apartment, Ross asked if I would go to the grocery store with him to pick up some more beer – as they were out. Rachel opted to stay home, saying we could have “boy time.”

I won’t divulge the entire conversation for sake of our respective manlinesses (that’s right – I pluralized manliness.), but I vividly remember talking about MMORPGs, and we might have even used the word “paladin” once or twice.

At the Albertson's on Broadway, the liquor section has a special entrance. We would later find that it is ONLY an entrance – which seems to defeat the purpose entirely. We grabbed our Sam Adam’s and went to pay.

The fantastically unfriendly cashier explained to us that the door we had come through was only an entrance – so we would have to walk all the way through the store to get back to the car.

With the box in hand, we stroll through the store and out the main door. There is a security guard at the door – who I smile at and say, “have a good night.”

“You too,” he says.

Half way to the car – I say to Ross, “do you realize how easily that could have just stolen that? Nobody saw us pay – we just walked right out the door, right past security. This isn't even in a bag.”

Ross suggests maybe they didn’t raise an eyebrow because of the fact that we didn’t look sketchy – and didn’t look like we had stolen it.

And then there are footsteps.

The security guard is running towards us. I turn and look at him and he yells “HEY! DID YOU GUYS PAY FOR THAT?”

Ross holds up the receipt.

Cop-osaurus Rex is good twenty feet away at this point.

He sees the small slip of paper, stops running, nods, and turns back around to go inside.

Ross’s jaw drops.

“Yeah,” Ross says to me, “because clearly the fact that I have a piece of paper in my pocket is proof that I’m not stealing.”

We concluded that Cop-osaurus Rex didn’t actually care, but his manager had yelled at him for not checking our receipt as soon as we were out the door.

I was reminded how glad I am that I no longer have a job where “security” is in my description.

We went back to talking about MMORPG’s until it was time for Crunch Wrap Supremes and Pam Beesley.

That One Chick

2009-03-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

When talking to strangers in a journalistic fashion - there are some rules you're suppose to follow. There's a dress code, use sir and mam, stuff like that. Being polite is good, acting like a grownup is better and professionalism is key.

Tonight - while reporting on a local government function for my Reporting Public Affairs Class - I overheard one of my colleagues ask a really, really stupid question.

My audio recorder wasn't running - or I would have it word for word on here. Actually - if my audio recorder had been on I would have put the clip up.

No less, the young lady in my class approached the clerk running the meeting during a break and asked "Can you - like - tell me the name of that one chick with the light hair who spoke near the beginning?"

I knew exactly who she was talking about. That "one chick" had said some really important things - and I chased her outside for a follow up as soon as she was done speaking. Par for the course - you never wait until the end of the meeting to talk to ANYONE.

But instead of stopping this lady before she made a total ass out of herself by saying, "Oh yeah... that was ______________," I simply let her make a total ass out of herself... because, well - sometimes that's just the right thing to do.

Munchkin

2009-03-07T18:02:00.000-08:00

I’m a munchkin - a teeny little man! You could put me in a suitcase – throw me into the overhead storage bin and save money on an airline ticket!

Hi ho! I kid.

Of my immediate family – I’m the tallest. I grew fast and stopped early – clocking in at 5’9” by middle school.

I’ve always had an admiration for small athletes. Asante Samuel, 5’10”, 185. Dustin Pedroia – 5’9”, 180. Dave Robbins? Same as Dustin… just a little more belly, I suppose.

Playing catcher at the University of East Anglia was humbling. Even though catcher is the place to be when you’re not as big as the other guys on the field – not being as tall as the other guys on the field sucks. Any sport where pushing is allowed – you are at a disadvantage.

Today, my friend Ben and I went to the park to play catch. We brought our baseball gloves and tossed it around for about an hour. There were some drunk kids playing kickball on the diamond, a group of guys playing football on the soccer field. And then there was us.

After the first hour – the football guys came over to us – and asked if we wanted to join. These were some big dudes. All of them wearing their Army t-shirts, one in fatigues, a few of them easily 6’8”. Before I had a chance to say, “no thanks…” Ben said “sure!” and so it was. We were off to play football… I asked immediately if it was touch football.

“Nope. Tackle. We’re not tackling too hard though.”

Hi ho!

Like a champion, I avoided the ball at all costs – blocking the guys who only out weighed me by 80 pounds rather than 160. It was like 8th grade gym class all over again – except, for some strange reason I was choosing to do it, rather than being forced into it.

It was actually a lot of fun. At one point – Ben got assigned to block the biggest guy on the other team. The big guy leaned in really close to Ben’s face and said “don’t take this personally.” A little piece of Ben’s soul died right then and there.

Near the end of the game – I was in the back field and an outlandishly large army guy in a Dallas Cowboys jersey is running to the end zone with the ball. How it turned out that I was the only thing between him and 7 points is a detail I didn’t catch – but no less, I stood my ground and then right at the last minute decided to get the hell out of the way. He gets his points – I keep my teeth. It seemed fair.

To your right - you will see an artists re-creation of how I remember this all playing out.

My team mates were understandably unhappy with my lack of a death wish and competitive spirit. One of them muttered something to me as the Cowboy and I walked back towards midfield.

The Cowboy heard it and said, “Dude – I would have done the exact same thing.”

Granted – the guy giving me shit about it probably wouldn’t have gotten out of the way. He would have stood his ground and been taken to it by a guy twice his size. The touch down would have been scored either way. In one scenario – somebody looses precious brain cells – and in the other, somebody just gets ridiculed a bit.

On the way home – I commented to Ben that I was by far the smallest guy on the field. He disagreed, saying that the guy in fatagues was smaller than I was.

“Yeah,” I said. “But he looked a lot meaner. I doubt he thinks about poetry in his free time.”

The Key to Strangers

2009-02-25T09:41:00.000-08:00

When I woke up this morning, I knew it was going to be a weird day.

I truly didn’t know why my alarm was ringing. I felt certain it was a Saturday – or at least maybe Christmas.

7:30 a.m.? More confusion. I opened the calendar on my phone and saw that it was Wednesday.

Last Wednesday – before my 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. discussion class, one of my classmates whispered to me, “I would rather be savagely beaten and left for dead than get up for this class twice a week.”

Sure, 9 a.m. classes are common – but usually, or at least you hope, it won’t require any thinking.

This one does.

I made my breakfast – drank my coffee – said good morning to my cat, Bread. He, as usual, went straight for the glasses and pulled them off my face and onto his belly. I got my things together trudged off to class on a Wednesday that felt like a Saturday or at least maybe Christmas.

After our quiz – Mr. Evans began talking about city budgets.

A few moments in – I heard my phone in my backpack vibrating. I quietly pull it out, expecting to see the word “Home,” or my room mate’s name.

Neither. 621-8278. I don’t know it off the top of my head – but know that all 621 numbers are the University. An unexpected call from the University seldom means your day is about to get better.

“David A. Robbins?” a female voice asks after I step out into the hallway to answer.

No good ever comes from a phone call that begins with someone asking your name. No “hello.” No “Hi, is this…” No. Just the name.

The woman identifies herself as being with the University Police.

“Are you the owner of a gray Hyundai?” she asks.

I know I parked legally. They’re not calling to tell me it’s been towed.

“Did you drive it to campus this morning?”

Oh dear.

“Are you missing anything?” asks the lady.

“What of mine do you think you have? If you tell me what to look for this will be easier.”

“Your keys,” she says.

With the phone still up to my ear – I briskly walk back into the classroom, grab my bag, and back out the door. As I have clearly interrupted the entire class – Mr. Evans jokingly says, “Uhh… bye, Dave.”

No keys in my bag. She tells me where they can be received.

Now back in the classroom, Evans stops talking and says to me, “well SOMETHING interesting has to have just happened.”

I tell my story.

“Do you need to go deal with this?” he asks, kindly.

“Is that okay?” I ask – remembering the if you even think about being late - you will be fed to the lions attendance policy.

“Hmm – I don’t know,” he says chuckling. “I guess your options are sitting here and listening to me yammer on about budgets or go see if your fucking car got stolen.”

My car is still there. I peer through the window and see that my stereo is still there – and all of the doors are locked.

After class, the Parking and Transportation office gladly gives me my keys. I hesitantly ask where they actually found them.

“In the driver side door,” the man says.

I frown and mumble something about embarrassment.

The guy chuckles and holds up a handful of other keys.

“You think you’re the only one to do this?” he asks. “At least once a week – the police find a car still running, with no one inside. This morning – they even found one with both of the doors open.”

My jaw drops.

“You college kids – I swear," he says. "You get up like zombies at the crack of dawn for 9 a.m. class – forget to drink your coffee and the next thing you know your car is on a vacation to Mexico without you!”

Sleeping with Strangers

2009-02-21T13:40:00.001-08:00

I like sleeping with strangers. I make a point of doing it at least a few times a week.

Oh no – I managed to make that sound sexual. Let me try that again.

I enjoy sleeping in public locations. Yeah – that’s a better start.

My love for sleeping in public places came out of necessity. During my freshmen year – when I lived on campus – taking a nap in between classes was not only easy, it was just “the way.”

Everybody did it. My room mate and I would both come in and out of the room at various times of day for interclass-naps

But then sophomore year – I lived at 1st Ave and Wetmore. With traffic – this was easily a half hour drive. Go home in between classes? Not happening.

That year, my good friend Scott not only lived in the same DORM I had freshmen year, but was in my old room. From time to time – when things got really desperate, he let me come take naps in his room (because, with unfair luck, his room mate got evicted early on in the year and was never replaced so there were 2 beds.)

But when things weren’t desperate – my search for places to comfortably sleep on campus grew to be a finite science.

When it’s time for an on campus nap, there are 4 possibilities. 3 of them are indoors with couches, and one of them is outside (Which, since I go to school in Arizona, is usually a reasonable possibility.)

Sleeping in public – apparently – is not for everyone. Some people worry about the “safety” of it. This never occurred to me until one of the women I work with SAW me sleeping on a couch in the union and asked me later if “anything weird had ever happened.” She explained that said she would worry that she’d wake up to find someone groping her. While this had never occurred to me as a possibility – I felt sad that, for women, this is probably a realistic thing to be worried about.

The only concern that has ever occurred to me while sleeping in public is that someone is going to steal my stuff. There are two solutions. One, sleep on top of your stuff, but that’s not very comfortable.

The second – I like to call the iPod security trick.

I’ve only tried this with a backpack – though, I imagine if you had a big enough purse it could work.

Plug in your head phones to whatever music listening device you use – and put said listening device at the bottom of your bag. Bury it. Bury it under as much stuff as you can. A jacket, books, anything and everything. Close the bag. I usually like to zip both zippers up to the top – surrounding the headphone wire. Put the head phones in your ears – it’s nap time.

What does this do? It’s kind of like fishing. If someone tries to make off with your bag, you’re going to feel a tug. If your music suddenly stops playing – jump up and grab the closest person, start wailing on them, and hope to God you grabbed the right person!

Granted – in my 4 years of sleeping in public, no one has ever tried to take my stuff. Someone could completely bypass my iPod trick by throwing caution to the wind and grabbing my bag and running like hell. Even without the time advantage they’d have that they’re on their feet when I’m ya know – asleep – I’ve been outrun by turtles.

Just a note – sleep where you will – but if you chose to sleep somewhere you’re not suppose to… like a grocery store – don’t try and blame me when you get arrested for trespassing!

PART III of III!!!

2009-02-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

Hi blogosphere,

I’m wicked tired and have more work to do than I’m actually going to get finished. This is convenient because today’s post is a short one anyway. The final installment of my gun nut trilogy! Woo! I apologize in advance that there will be no pictures.

Recently I had to go pick up a part for a shotgun.

The beast didn’t come with a recoil pad. So – firing it with a hard wood butt pressed up against my shoulder left me with a mighty bruise. You could practically see the word “Mossberg” pressed into my pectoral. It was unpleasant.

I looked around online and found recoil pads ranging from anywhere to $10-$189. For those of you who don’t know, a recoil pad is nothing more than a piece of shock absorbent material you put at the butt of a gun so, when you fire it, the kick doesn’t kill your shoulder.

I am skeptical that a $189 recoil pad would provide any greater protection than a $10 version, though this is not something I will find out because – in my traditional college fashion, I got the least expensive thing possible.

Faced with the option of purchasing blend-material hybrid-shock-absorption technology – I went with straight up rubber. A little rubber sleeve with a big rubber pad that you slide onto the gun. Sizes? Small medium and large. No measurements – no fancy terminology – just what I needed.

I ask where to find this at the store and am directed over to a corner where they hang on the wall. I first decide I’ll try a small – assuming a tighter fit will be better. As I’m struggling to get this thing on – a woman who works there comes over and quietly asks, “Have you already paid for that, young man?”

“No,” I tell her.

“Well you’re about to – that’s the wrong size and you’re going to break it.”

She advises me that the LARGE size will be too big but the medium size might be too small.

“So what should I do?” I ask.

“Get the medium. Next time you take a bath – just bring it in with you and it should slide right on. And if not – just use a dab of that silicon based lubricant you kids have around these days.”

I was stunned – and chose not to ask her to clarify what EXACTLY she was referring to. Granted, she could have been referring to the kind of lubricant sold at a hardware store… but… that isn’t really something “us kids” have around.

Never the less… I got it on with a pair of pliers. No liquid involved… ever.

Come for the strangers, stay for the sport (Part II of III)

2009-02-10T14:55:00.001-08:00

The first of the guns that came to be mine is a Harrington and Richardson, “Topper Model,” shotgun. .410 gauge, single shot, break action. In the shotgun family – this .410 is the baby sitting in a high chair at the end of the table drooling on itself.

This gun was a present from my grandfather – to my father – when he was 10. My dad wanted one to go quail hunting with his friends in the New Jersey woods. After an ongoing battle between Dad’s mom (Nanny) and my Dad, my grandfather (Poppy) came home from work one day with this gun under his shoulder.

It was used the day my grandfather got it. I don’t know who he got it from – I’m not sure if my dad knows either – but the way I remember hearing it, Poppy drove out to a farm somewhere in New Jersey and asked the farmer if he had any extra guns lying around. This was back in the days when you COULD do this – no license transfers to worry about. No serial numbers.

Oh yeah – the gun doesn’t even have a serial number! This is a detail I found out on the day I met Murphy – one of Tucson’s few gunsmiths.

I’ve seen him puttering around three different places. Murphy’s Guns, pictured to the right; I’ve seen him once at the Marksman Pistol Institute, which I linked to in the previous post; and I’ve seen him at another place whose name and link I won’t provide because they are dishonest about prices. (You bastards!)

I approached the counter with the Topper Model, and was asked by a younger guy if there was anything he could help me with. I told him that the gun had been sitting in storage for the last 20 years and I wanted know if it was still operational. Very politely, he said he would get Murphy and he could take a look at it.

Like most people who make their careers as gunsmiths – Murphy is a little old man. He was wearing overalls and a plastic apron – and had one of these magnifying hat things on.

Before saying a word to me, he looked at the gun and said, “I’ve seen this gun before.”

The young man who had fetched him on my behalf said, “Yeah… this is the H&R Topper…”

“No!” said Murphy, loudly.

“No?” asked aforementioned guy.

“No. I mean – I’ve seen this gun before.”

I looked to the guy who’d helped me. The guy who helped me looked to Murphy. There was silence for a moment.

“This is the gun that Christopher f***ing Columbus brought with him on the Mayflower when he sailed the Ocean f***ing blue in 1842! This gun is that old!”

Murphy looked at me and saw that I thought it was funny, and made one of those Fonzie noises.

“Eaayhh!” went Murphy. “Eaayhh!”

Come for the strangers, stay for the sport! (A 3 Part Series)

2009-02-08T12:01:00.000-08:00

Part I:

I didn’t become interested in shooting until quite recently. I went to a rifle range with my dad, Poppy and my brother Jesse when I was 7 or 8. I fondly remember it, but I don’t remember having any urge to take up the sport at that point.

My dad and I started making regular visits to a pistol range in Mesa after we moved to Arizona. I enjoyed it then, too – but still, it wasn’t the guns that got me hooked on the sport.

What got me hooked on the sport were the people... and the *crazy* things they have to say. Everybody knows the political views held by most gun nuts - and the stereotypes held are very true, but if you think the outlandish things said end at politics... your mind is about to be blown! (On an unrelated note... I would strongly advise against wearing an Obama shirt to a shooting range... that ranks pretty high on my "uncomfortable moments" list.)

In Old Town Scottsdale – there is (was?) a shooting range with a sign out front of a teddy bear holding a machine gun. I couldn't find a picture so I drew one for you... My dad and I walked in there one day and were approached by the owner. He shook both my dad and my hands and said, “I’m a cold hearted son of a bitch who loves money above all things… so – if you’d like to talk to me about giving me any of your money, I’ll be your best friend until you walk out the door.”

I didn’t write it down at the time he said it – but formed a flash memory of it. I remember that fat old man saying that to me as vividly as I remember being woken up by my mom on the morning of 9/11. (Maybe that’s an exaggeration… but I made my point!)

I learned quickly some general facts about gun salesmen. Most of them are paid on commission, and most of them are retired and working at a gun shop because they simply love guns. This means that they’re excited to talk to you, and if they think a fat commission check is in store – you’ve got, as the man in Old Town said, a friend until you walk out that door.

The first time I visited The Marksman Pistol Institute in Tucson was about two years ago. I now do most of my rifle practice at their range. On my first visit, I was approached by a very old man. He still works there – and he’s always there. I’ve heard a few people refer to him as Cowboy Bill.

Cowboy Bill found me looking at a case of revolvers and asked, “which one of these little ladies are you hoping to take home with you tonight?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, still looking at the case.

“I’m sorry, young man,” said Bill. “I’ve had a long, promiscuous relationship with guns since I was a young man – and my hearing is proof. You’re going to need to speak up a bit louder.”

I knew from that moment forward that this was a man I needed to chat with. To avoid sending him off looking for a real customer, I lied and said I was looking for something for defense. This is a buzzword for gun sellers. It’s as good as walking in and saying “Hey – I have money to spend!”

As soon as I said that, he walked over to a different case and came back holding the largest revolver I’ve ever seen.

“This,” he said, “is a modified flare gun. It’s a revolver that used to shoot flares, but now shoots 12 gauge shotgun shells instead.”

I have never seen anything like this since that day, and could not find anything talking about it online... which means Cowboy Bill probably thought it up and had it custom made for his shop. This was the most terrifyingly unnecessary piece of equipment I have ever seen in my entire life.

“Looks good on you,” he said, after he handed it to me. “What does a young man like need to be defending with a firearm? Got kids running around?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Wife?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Live with your girlfriend?”

“Nope. I’m single.”

“Then what are you hoping to defend?” he asked.

I looked at him earnestly and thought about the question.

“I have a kitten. He’s 4 months old – and I would kill to protect him.”

Cowboy Bill looked at me to see if I was kidding – I looked at Cowboy Bill to see if he was going to start laughing.

“Well… I’ve got two daughters and a wife… but I suppose I would kill for our cat too…”

Though I never bought the modified flare gun of doom – or anything like it – I do still see Cowboy Bill almost every time I go to use their range. He’s rung me up on the cash register a handful of times – and though I don’t want to ask, I do wonder every time we make eye contact if he remembers this exchange. I’d like to think he does.

Unnecessary Rubbing

2009-02-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

Say what you will about the Cardinals’ “Cinderella Season,” but they broke the record for most penalties ever in a Super Bowl game. They gave up 45 yards to the Steelers during their opening drive with 3 personal fouls – and that was only the beginning of it.

I won’t say, “had they not played like children, they would have won it.” But – had they not played like children, they wouldn’t have looked like a box of tools losing it to an undeniably dominating opponent.

Yeah yeah yeah – so, Pittsburgh’s Harrison punched a guy in the kidney who was already laying on the ground and the Cardinals thought the 15 yard penalty wasn’t harsh enough. Oh, Okay! Let’s retaliate by spearing the place holder when Pittsburgh is kicking an easy field goal, burn 3 minutes off the clock – and still give up an easy field goal!

My dear friend Rachel heard the penalty, “Unnecessary Roughness” called so many times, that she finally asked “Are they saying unnecessary rubbing?”

Pretty much, honey. We laughed about this for a while – because, sooner or later the NFL will have a penalty for just such things. She thought we were teasing her, rather than the NFL. We proceeded to explain that when the “Excessive Celebration,” rule fines every player $10,000 every time they do a touch down celebration in the end zone.

While the rubbing that took place on the field was anywhere from moderately to completely unnecessary – parts of Tucson got to see a whole ‘nother type of rubbing during the fourth quarter.

APPARENTLY, some "undisclosed number of viewers" in Tucson saw between "10-30 seconds" of porn during the 4th quarter. Unfortunately for me – I was not one of those viewers. This means that I have now missed BOTH the Janet Jackson Nipple Incident, and the Tally Whacker of Terror!

While I don’t feel right linking to the actual clip that was played on TV, it has been getting plenty of media attention – which you can see here, or here. (Rest assured, there is no tally whacker to be seen on either of those links.)

Oh, and by the way – ESPN, The Porn Industry, and anyone else who might be thinking of stealing it – I own the copyright to “Tally Whacker of Terror,” so step off!

Sporting with Strangers

2009-01-30T12:01:00.000-08:00

When I am inducted into the Hall of Fame – this will be one of the moments they talk about. One of the highlights of my amateur sporting career came last night.

In terms of the amount of awesome there was to be had – it is on par with the unassisted double play I made at the plate with UEA baseball, and on par with the epic slide into second base during a practice.

Though it wasn’t baseball I was playing last night. Nor was it rifling – the other sport I’ve found I’m actually quite good at.

No – the sport in question last night was air hockey.

My friend Ben and I went to The Surly Wench, which is – hands down – my favorite bar in Tucson. Behind the bar of The Wench are some of the toughest looking chicks I’ve ever seen. Shaved heads, covered in tattoos, ears gauged, knife carrying, boot wearing bartenders. I very enthusiastically introduced myself to one of them on my birthday. Her name is Meegan, and she has not forgotten my name since. (And that is spelled correctly by the way. MEE-gan)

This bar is not the kind of place polo shirt wearing creative writing dorks like me usually hang out… and for this reason, I feel very at home there. They have drinks called “Blue Balls” and “Southern Bondage,” and if you ask them for a ‘surprise,’ and tell them how many dollars it should cost and what the base liquor should be, they’ll always make you something creative.

Inside The Surly Wench is an air hockey table. Ben and I have been playing each other roughly every Thursday for a while now. Ben almost always kicks my ass. It’s really irritating. But things started off differently last night.

We played one game – and then the table just reset. Air turned back on, the puck came out… we got to keep playing. This went on until a guy and gal, Tristan and Judith, came and put three quarters on the side of the table to challenge the winner of our game.

I – as usual – lost. Ben went on to play Judith and I chatted with the Tristan fellow. He owns a rare book selling business based in Tucson – which, sounds cool on the surface but after he explained it to me I decided not to ask if he was hiring.

After a few free games were played – it was my turn again. Tristan had kicked Ben’s ass, and it was now my turn to play Tristan.

Judith was practically crying laughing at how seriously we were focusing on the puck. She kept trying to distract us and failed epically. My formidable opponent and I leaned over the table – extending our wingspan to maximum reach and covering the rink like pros.

The score was quickly 5-3, me. Tristan says, “So… I kicked the ass of the guy who always kicks your ass… and you’re beating me… so, you’re kicking your friend’s ass by proxy.”

I scored another goal – and decided to take things to the next level. It was time for singing, and a little victory dance… I don’t remember if I was singing Gwen Stefani or Old Dirty Bastard – but it was sung in a falsetto, and I was shaking my booty all the same.

It was either my epic athleticism, or my a cappella victory music… but people actually came over and started watching. The pressure was mounting. I scored the final goal – winning 7-3, and now it was my turn to play Judith.

Judith took an early lead – 4-0, and then with 3 unanswered goals, I was back in the game. And then it was tied. I pounded on my chest like Tarzan, wiped the perspiration from my forehead and put the puck back on the table. With one quick strike – I was in the lead.

And then it was tied. 6-6. Winner take all.

I tried to count how many people were watching at this point – but there were too many people standing around to assign numbers. (That’s a big fat lie. There were 11 people – and it was awesome.)

After a few volleys – I fired a bank shot, and into the goal it went. The table turned off, and then right back on – were granted another free game.

“This is epic!” announced Tristan. “Can Dave beat all 3 to become the world champion!?”

My final opponent was Ben. The Ben. The one who kicks my ass every time we play air hockey. It was more exciting than the Red Sox playing the Cardinals in the World Series… yes – instead… it was the Red Sox playing the Yankees final game to get into the World Series! (Wait… that doesn’t make any sense.)

I tipped back my Pacifico, bit down on the lime and was ready for battle!

But it was no battle. It was a slaughter! With flashes as bright as thunder, I was quickly leading 4-0! I decided that my falsetto booty shaking no longer needed to be reserved for after goals. It was party time.

Slow down, Robbins. Ben started to come back, and brought the score to 4-3. No more dancing.

But the three unanswered goals Ben scored would be the only 3 of the game. I regained my focus and came back to take my crown! World Champion of Air Hockey! People clapped, somebody (surprisingly) bought me a beer – and I was the king of air hockey.

Keeping them Strangers

2009-01-25T13:15:00.000-08:00

This semester, I'm taking my second ever online class. The first one I took was Advanced Placement US History. It was over the summer before my senior year of high school. I kicked it's ass. This semester I'm taking Nutrition... a class I was suppose to take freshmen year but decided not to because I wanted to take a 400 level English class and read cool poetry.

Like my history class over that summer 4 years ago - I also plan to kick this class's ass.

I'm not quite sure what purpose this serves - but in both online classes I have experience with, they require that you post a message introducing yourself to the class. In my history class - some people typed up long memoirs about themselves and why they were taking the class.

The posts for this class are much shorter - but a few of them contain the words, "I'm looking forward to meeting all of you!"

What? Really? You're taking an online class in hopes of meeting people? For God's sake, join a gym, use Match.com, ask a homeless person to help you change a tire on the side of the I-10! I can't think of any worse way to meet someone than by taking an online class...

Not only did I not meet a single one of the class mates in my online history class - I never formally met the professor, either. And dammit, I don't plan on changing that this semester.

So - in an effort to make sure that this doesn't happen, I posted this little gem as my, "Getting to know your classmates," post.

"Hi,

My name is Dave Robbins. I am a journalism and creative writing major at the UofA. I'm taking this class so I can graduate. I like food. I will be very sad if this class convinces me that gummy bears are not a good staple for a mans diet. Please don't break my heart."

After posting my awesome message, I decided to crack open the book for the first time. The opening sentence reads, "Although you may not always have been aware of it, nutrition has played a significant role in your life!"

My mind is already blown! I might have to take a step back from my "no meeting online classmates," policy just so I can discuss how influential and inspiring this book has already proven to be.

Consorting with Strangers (or, Sayonara, my scholarship!)

2009-01-23T12:04:00.000-08:00

I applied for the student loan which will pay for this last semester of college in March - while I was still in England.

My tuition still has yet to be paid.

I received a letter from the loan company saying the money had been disbursed… and a letter from UofA saying the money had been received… and then a notice saying my tuition still hasn’t been paid!

Whiskey tango foxtrot?!

Apparently – since I am taking 2 classes at Pima Community College, I have to fill out a ‘Consortium Agreement,’ before they will ACTUALLY give me my money.

But the money is there there. It’s in my name. I’m paying interest on it. The young man at the financial aid desk turned his monitor so I could see – sure enough. There it is.

Well that’s good.

It does make me wonder though – what are they doing with it until it becomes mine? When I was getting an allowance as a child, if I wanted to go buy the latest Beanie Baby on Monday and my dad told me I couldn’t have my allowance until Friday, it drove me nuts. I knew the money existed and was guaranteed to become mine on Friday – so wasn’t it technically already mine? What would become of the money until Friday? Would it be spent on groceries? Would it increase or decrease in value? (Well… that last bit I probably didn’t think about at the age of seven…)

I digress.

The guy who informed me that the UofA was holding my money ransom told me that since I was taking 7 units at Pima, I had lost my scholarship.

The amount of money I am saving BY taking classes at Pima is an amount greater than the modest scholarship I’ve been receiving, so it’s no big loss. I did however, realize that a scholarship… or at least the one I’ve been receiving is not ACTUALLY an award for the good grades I got in high school. It’s like those online coupons where if you spend an OUTLANDISH amount of money buying things you don’t need, you get free shipping! Woo!

You’re not going to spend an outlandish amount of money on tuition? Fine! No free shipping for you, Robbins!

I fill out my form and wait in line for a half hour to speak to someone on the other side of the admin office. She tells me as soon as I walk up that she always thinks, ‘Consortium Agreement’ sounds sinister. I tell her I agree.

As she’s typing in my information, she looks at my student ID number and asks, “Is that a 9 or a 4?” I chuckle and tell her it’s a 9. She looks up at me to see why I’m chuckling.

“When I was in fifth grade,” I tell her, “my teacher, Mrs. Schlagel, made me go sit in the corner every time she couldn’t tell if something was a 9 or a 4…”

Of course, after entering all of this information, the registration lady gives me an additional task I must complete before I can have my money. I’m beginning to feel a little bit like Link, from the Zelda series. You have to find the man with the blue chicken, change the tire on his car and rescue his virgin daughter from the grips of Gannon’s castle before you will earn the key which unlocks the box containing a picture of an enchanted door to the house in the hills… you get the idea.

“By when do I need to have all of this paper work submitted?” I ask, defeated.

“Well,” she says, handing me back my student ID, “by when would you like to have your money?”

Two Little Husbands

2009-01-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day of my 8th and final semester of American Sign Language. I was going to include the explanation for why I’ve had to take 8 semesters – but after typing out the whole explanation complete with administrative details and a ticking clock – I decided to cut it. I got administratively screwed by a really stupid technicality – and this is the second time through the 4 semesters required of me by U of A.

It hasn’t actually been too bad. Nothing like taking a class on a subject you already know pretty well. Though – I took a year off in between my 7th and 8th semesters. I had a dream last night that I was asked to get up in front of the class and talk about my family, and I couldn’t remember the word “sister.” When I woke up – I tried to sign it to myself to calm my fears… and just like in the dream, I couldn’t remember it. I looked it up online and made sure to not mention either Maggie or Marja.

The dream did remind me that not only have I taken a year off, but I haven’t spoken to anyone or looked at the book in that year either. I was a little nervous. 4th semester – everyone is going to be speaking fluently! Heavens to Betsy!

When it came my turn to stand up and sign about myself – I say, “Hi Everyone. I’m Dave… I have a cat named Bread…” When you’re trying to weasel your way out of actually talking about yourself – mentioning an oddly named pet is a good bet. No one ever looks at you and says “Come on, you have a cat named after a food – tell us something we WEREN’T expecting.”

The teacher, who I’ve had before, nodded and said “Cool. Thanks.” I went and sat back down. The next few people to go signed faster than I did. One of them signed fast enough that I didn’t catch any of what she said – but, I’ve heard plenty of times that sheer speed does not equal a good signer.

And then a woman named Chris stood up. She went in front of the class and signed, “Hi, I’m Chris. I have two little husbands!”

The teacher looked at her, and – in English asked, “Husbands? Two little husbands?”

She said aloud, “No… two little boys… not husbands.”

My confidence rose a bit.

The next guy who got up and introduced to himself finger spelled his name and I swear - I thought he said his name was, “Ingmar Islop.” But judging by his appearance of being a tall, pasty white kid in a heavy metal t-shirt, I’m pretty sure I got that one wrong.

I came home and told this story to my room mate who quickly responded, “didn’t you know that Ingmar Islop was Israeli for ‘I don’t know sign language? Duh!”

The Old Job

2009-01-19T22:19:00.000-08:00

I went to the gym today, for the first time of this semester. It’s one of my few former employers I still enjoy visiting. I still am familiar with most of the staff, I usually get free things and I like the atmosphere.

While employed there – we had to agree that if we were working out there, even if we weren’t clocked in, we had to assist in the event of an emergency. After working there as long as I did – it’s not an easy mode to let go of. While doing a cardio warm up, I still find myself glancing to the people at my left and my right to make sure no one is on the verge of collapse. I’ve jumped in and spotted someone about to crush their wind pipe while bench pressing their body weight by themself. It’s a neat feeling. I still feel like I’m a part of something while I’m there.

In an effort to lower my body fat ratio – I’m adding more cardio stuff to the routine. I did a half hour on the elliptical before swimming for 40 minutes today. I’m going to be a hurting puppy tomorrow… but it’s good for me.

After my swim – on my way out of the locker room I was behind two girls also leaving the gym. According to Google Earth – my parking spot is 0.7 miles away from the gym, so I followed behind them for a ways.

At one point, I heard one of the girls ask the other one, “when do classes start?”

Her friend responded, “Sometime this week.”

Pure, unadulterated shock.

Now – they could have been talking about Pima Community College. Classes indeed DO start “sometime this week.” They start tomorrow.

But they could have been talking about UofA.

What are the odds that a student could both be unaware of classes starting? One in one hundred? If that were the case, that would be 3,680 students… probably unlikely.

One in one thousand? 36 students.

If the odds were one in ten thousand: that’s 3.6 students totally unaware that classes started on Wednesday! If those 3.6 students actually exist – I’d be willing to bet a pretty penny that they are friends… because – well… stupid does attract stupid…

Conclusion? This is entirely possible! What are the odds that these students exist AND I’d run into them at the precise moment they were discussing it? Astronomically small. But after moving in with my ex-girlfriend's childhood best friend and not discovering the connection until months after we had shared a residence… I conclude that even THIS is entirely possible.

An Ungodly Amount of Pancakes

2009-01-17T15:36:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day my room mate and I have hung out since I got back into town. I asked him this morning if he wanted to get breakfast.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked.

“An ungodly amount of pancakes!”

Though I have yet to find a restaurant that actually has “An ungodly amount of pancakes” listed on the menu, the short stack at Bobo’s on Grant… well… is just that.

Instead of a normal, circular dish with a few pancakes piled on top of each other – the server brought me a monster sized pasta tray with a few pancakes thrown haphazardly around. Looks like this thing… except with pancakes on it.

As I begin diving face first into this massive platter of pancake – an older guy comes and sits down next to me at the counter.

I can tell he’s eyeing me… I don’t know if he’s hoping I’ll offer him some or if he’s amazed at how fast I am eating this huge helping of food.

I pause to take a sip of water and look in his direction.

He says to me, “You know, my wife and I always come in here and order that… except the two of us together can only eat half and we bring the rest home for the next day!”

I’ve talked to enough strangers in my life to know that asking this man where his wife is, and why they’re not having pancakes, is going to end in a sad story.

I say, “Yeah? I think I can do it… and not out of hunger or nutritional necessity… no – I think I can do it out of pure determination… I’ll be diabetic by dinner time.”

He laughs and we introduce ourselves.

The pancakes are quickly defeating me. Our server comes over, and to the three of us – my self, my room mate, and the new guy – tells us that someone has just ordered a potato and banana sandwich. She rolls her eyes and goes to put in the order.

“You know – bananas are good for your sex organs,” says the man, nodding nostalgically.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah,” he tells me. “High in potassium. Hmm… a banana, potato and oyster sandwich sounds like something you could market – it would taste awful… but that doesn’t stop people these days.”

I ask what he does. He was the art director for Forbes magazine before moving to Tucson, from New York City, in 1980.

“I’m hoping to move to New York this summer,” I tell him.

“In New York City," he tells me, "you’re either dirt poor… or you’re the richest man in the universe. If you’re anything in between that – you’re a nobody.”

Davey and the OB/GYN

2009-01-15T14:06:00.000-08:00

During the first week of my freshmen year, I had a really relapse of mono, or “glandular fever,” as it is called in every country other than the US. Compared to the case I had in high school, this one was very mild. I slept for a few days, didn’t eat much, and felt better by the following weekend.

But – being my first week of college… my first week living alone, my first week away from my girlfriend, I panicked. It was Friday when I finally decided to call Campus Health. They told me they could get me in on Monday morning – but I thought that was too far in the future.

The nurse put me on hold. When she came back, she told me that there was only one doctor left in the clinic, and if I wanted to be seen I needed to come in immediately.

When I arrived – a nurse took me through a door and walked me down a hallway with posters of ovaries and birth canals. She led me into a room and told me someone would be in to see me shortly.

I climbed up on the table and waited. A moment later, in entered a tall, female doctor with a handful of cotton swabs. She gave me a funny look. Her name tag read Dr. So and So, OB/GYN.

She looked at her chart, nodded and then told me, “Well, this is something you don’t see every day in my line of work.”

The purpose of this blog is to share with you something that I see every day in MY line of work: strangers. I’ve been talking to strangers since I was old enough to talk. It’s no coincidence that both of my majors require me to strike up conversation with anyone and everyone I come within 8 feet of.

I once spent a half an hour in the grocery store listening to a little old lady tell me how to choose apples out of the bin. Recently, a catholic priest told me his entire life story, which ended with him marrying a woman 14 weeks after he retired from the clergy. Some of the stories I’ve heard are crazy. Some of the things people tell me are unbelievable, but the one thing I’ve learned from all of it is that people will tell you some pretty crazy things if you make it really clear that you’re willing to listen.

I’m not sure how often I’ll update… and I’m certain that I’m not sticking to any particular formula. Some stories will be about eaves dropping. Plenty will come from the grocery store (stranger-talking heaven)… and with that, welcome to Talking To Strangers!