Oct 29 2007
This One’s for You, Syd
I spent most of today lying around, atoning for yesterday’s sins. (I don’t think I was supposed to walk eight blocks in my cast.)
Of all the people who might have called me last week, FH was the last I’d expect. She’d helped take care of my grandmother during those final years. I always admired FH’s feistiness, and was mystified by her abiding cheerfulness. But after keeping in touch for a while I faded away. Do you want to see a picture of Grannie? She was the best in the world.
FH was in town visiting her son. I figure you haven’t been to Oakland if you haven’t been to Mama’s Royal Café, so that’s where we arranged to meet. I took the bus over there since I’m too gimpy-legged to drive; the only drawback was that it didn’t stop anywhere near Mama’s. My wonderful daughter, who was on duty there that day, got us seated right away… and in one of the few coveted booths. That girl’s got connections — the kind I can use.
I think FH liked the food pretty well; less so the service: “You’ve got five seconds to order” and “You want a hamburger? Can’t you see it’s on the weekday menu? Today is Saturday!”
I don’t think I’m in Delaware anymore.
Next day…
Ooops. Got sidetracked by Facebook, which leaves me with just one question: why? Why did I spend a minute there, and why do others spend hours every day? And where does the time come from? There’s no doubt that there are treasures there. If strange and mysterious stuff didn’t surround me anyway, I’d probably go looking for it on Facebook. I mean, check out what I found just by accident on my way here — and I didn’t even glance left or right as I passed through. It’s two movie reviews by a young man:
About The Chronicles of Narnia he wrote:
“good special effect, but jus a shit film, dat ugly lil girl wiv da huge teef annoyed da shit outta me”
And here’s what he thought about Titanic:
“Was well boring, went on way too long and da only goot part is when it was sinkin da man jumped off and smashed his head off da propellor! lol”
Stuff like that makes life worth living.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What was I saying? Oh … okay. Here’s FH and me at Mama’s. But I didn’t ask her permission to use the photo here so I have to hide her eyes.
It’s a treat to spend time with the good people from your past.
And then there are the good people from the present. [Syd: this is the part about you!]
I got to see Syd and H! I got to see Syd and H! It was an impromptu visit and we had fun even though we didn’t go kayaking and we had a good meal even though I couldn’t drink coffee and we laughed a lot even though nothing was funny. No, wait: Things were funny. Very funny. Like when Syd demonstrated kickboxing … with her eyes blacked-out, no less.
And here’s me helping Syd practice kickboxing. I blacked out my eyes too this time, because I’m tired of being different.
