Three years ago, during the period in my life I affectionately refer to as, “The Time All Hell Broke Loose” (T.A.H.B.L), I decided that eating was for chumps and took up sleeplessness as the hobby that I have still been most successful at. Before this time I was milk maid happy – large breasted, soft armed, dimpled cheeked, good for a roll in the hay with any nice boy who would carry my pails kind of girl. Or not. But when I couldn’t keep my clothes from falling off my bony hips, or sleep at all, or think of anything but what I had lost, I got my rapidly diminishing ass into counselling to, “Handle this tragedy in the healthiest way possible.”
I nervously walked into the reception area for my first session and up to the desk to check in, only to be told that my hour had been double booked with the man who was standing behind me. We two strangers stood awkwardly together while the receptionist asked us to decide who would get to wait for an hour and who would get to walk right in. The man informed us both that he needed to go immediately, that he couldn’t wait around, and couldn’t reschedule. I conceded. The two of us sat for a minute while the counsellor finished with her client; the man told me my skirt was pretty; I pretended to read my book, content to have an hour to brace myself before spilling all my embarrassing guts to a woman I had never met before.
My turn came. I walked in. Did the deed. Exited. Took the elevator down. The doors opened and despite the fact that it was well past the hour since he was supposed to have left for the important meeting, the double booked man was waiting for me.
Now, I pride myself in my ability to make excuses for other people’s odd behaviour. I’m a bumbling oaf sometimes, too, and people who go out of their way to point out other’s oddities and socially alienate them make me very uncomfortable, but I would be telling a fat fib if I didn’t say that when he walked up to me and asked me out for a coffee I was a little uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable than I usually am around men who are interested in me.
The fact that we met in a therapist’s office, that he pushed ahead and made me wait unnecessarily, and then waited outside the elevators for me didn’t seem to faze him. I only smiled and declined, walked to my car and left.
I haven’t thought about that man for a long time, but he popped into my head this week as I drove past the therapist’s office. I realized a while ago that the world is not full of dangerous people. And though I am not a proponent of independence at the cost of stupidity, I’ve walked alone at night through a lot of foreign cities and have always found people to be kind and generous with me, even when I’ve misjudged and needed help because of the random dangerous ones. So what I’m thinking about now is how that man at the therapist’s forced a fake nonchalance when I turned him down, how he graciously walked away, and how we went our separate ways. Un-stalked. Safe. Respected. And of how I’m an oaf. You’re an oaf. We’re a big oafish family.
Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Have mercy.
3 comments:
oh mercy.
It is something, what you say. The world could be much more dangerous than we usually find it; people could be much less forgiving than we often experience them. Sometimes it's all that bad. But sometimes God breaks in.
nice to hear from you again, joel.
ya, deanna. i think more often than not god breaks in.
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