It started with a sneeze. And then there was about 8 minutes of relentless, one-way speed dating that I did not ask for which continued until I walked away. As I told my father the other night on the phone, “It used to take me eight months to decide that I couldn’t tolerate someone’s nonsense. Now it only takes eight minutes.”
Last Saturday I went into Tractor Supply to look at
blueberry bushes. Their bushes were
dried out; the flowerettes on them were crispy-dead and I can’t imagine who
would be dumb enough to buy plants that looked THAT BAD. So I went inside. I heard chicks and ducklings in the
tower-sized brooder calling so I went over.
I do not know why I don’t visit them every year: they are so cool. No matter what is happening in life, watching
baby chicks just do what they do makes you feel better. Whatever it is that they do. And every now and then one sits in the corner
with his eyes half-mast and you wonder if he is going to make it and then that wrecks
the whole thing. But I digress.
The next thing I heard was this FWAH-FWAH sound. I wandered toward it, wondering if they were
torturing goats in the back of the store.
Nope. It turned out to be a kid
about 8 to 10 years old that was playing with a dog toy. Relentlessly.
It was a noise worse than nails on a chalkboard. Almost worse than the Styrofoam cooler that
used to squeak in the back of our station wagon when my parents took us to the
beach. That sound actually makes me
nauseous. I do not know why. But when I saw this kid, deliberately,
rhythmically, incessantly, tweaking that dog toy and his mother just
blah-blah-blahing to her husband who had draped himself almost hopelessly over
the handlebar of the shopping cart … I had to leave the area. The school teacher in my soul was about to
kick-in and it would have been loud and very few people would be left standing
from the blast.
I was so very stressed from that relentless FWAH-FWAH sound
that I could not complete my mission to inspect the protein level in a certain
brand of dog food. That, and the bag was
over 20 pounds and up on a higher shelf so I could not move it. I stood there feeling a bit defeated. Eight feet away, a man sneezed. I said, “Bless you.” He retorted with the very p.c. response, “I’m
not sick.” And I turned to look at him
and said, “And I’m not worried about that.”
He added, “You know. Pretty soon we are going to have to all carry
vaccination cards.” And, non-plussed, I
said: “I’m not worried about that
either.” Then he began.
He told me about his four-year-old dachshund that just had
$7,000 surgery at the major animal hospital in New York that is famous for both
their surgeries and their price-gouging.
He told me about his little garden that is troubled by rabbits and
squirrels – the reason why his dachshund has burned-out it’s joints digging or
whatever after critters. He told me about
his lymph node under his right armpit that he had to utilize the mammography
machine to get it checked out. He told
me he drove truck for a delivery company and that it makes him nervous when
people accept packages from him and are not wearing masks, so he just slides
things across their deck/patio to them.
And all the while he is going on about this, I have this
strange, but usual to me, train of thought going on in my head:
He
is kind of handsome. Well-kept. Nice eyes ... above his mask.
He’s
not skinny and that doesn’t bother me.
Apparently me being “not skinny” doesn’t bother him.
I
wonder where we could meet for coffee around here if I wanted to continue this
conversation.
And then ….
He’s
got a mouth like he licked a potty. I’ve
heard every swear word I know, including the F-word come out of him. Scratch the coffee.
And just like that, the impromptu speed date was done. He got some practice in, and I turfed another
man in short order. Here’s why. It’s not that I don’t use a few cow pasture
words myself. It’s that when a person is
supposed to be on their GOOD behavior to impress you, if they talk like that so
naturally, you are a FOOL if you think they are going to talk nicer to you
later. A DARNED FOOL. I imagined him saying the F-word in front of
my parents. That aint’ gonna fly. I imagined how he would talk to a girlfriend
or wife when he got angry – which happens inevitably in every
relationship. I just couldn’t believe in
his ability to change.
One of my friends said to me this week, “well people can
change.” I told her I wasn’t so sure
anymore. I know that I tried to give up
the BULL SH*T word and I couldn’t do it.
I could NOT do it. It just described
powerfully so many situations that I needed it in my repertoire. Why is it that I want a man who is genteel,
who is educated but fun, who is more likely to excuse my own idiosyncrasies than
to blurt back at me: THAT is UTTER BULLSH*T! It’s because of one simple thing: I want to marry UP.
It is unlikely that I will be raising children with someone
when I get married, IF I get married. I
am old enough to presume that ship has sailed.
So I don’t need to evaluate a man as “father” material as I assess him
for what he brings to the table. I just
have to ask: Can I enjoy talking with
this person? Will he like watching
re-runs with me? Does he love dogs and
will he help me with my dog business?
Will he want to walk with me by the ocean after eating spaghetti
somewhere great? I used to think I would
be in youth ministry forever in some shape, manner, or form, so it would be so
great to have a man who IS good with kids … almost fatherly to an orphaned
generation … I might go back to youth ministry … okay, so I take it back. Father-material is still on the table. Plus the other thing ….
If I was to date THAT guy, he would always say: “You know, you talk a lot. The longest you let ME TALK was the day I met
you at Tractor Supply. From there on
out, I can’t get a word in edgewise.”
And maybe that is all there is to it.
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