2006-06-14

I Keep Thinking that Today is Thursday

I was just in a three hour meeting with a salesperson who has crazy eyes.
When he says that he wasn't smart enough to go to the college he went to but he was on the football team and didn't have to do much homework, you're pretty sure that he's for reals.

And since you're idiot enough to be stuck in a meeting with this crazy-eyed, gigantic dude, you do NOT want to ask about it or try to pull any brainiac tricks of making fun of him out of your uncool, fake leather portfolio.

Instead, I rolled my eyes in my head every time I pretended to be looking out the window at someone walking by.

And I also wrote my name in an intricate design with Coffee Man's name, for practice for when we have our first live theater (because of his theatre major)/coffee shop and we are pouring a new side walk for it and I get to put our initials in the cement, as a pretty long-lasting tag of our love.
I tried to hide those notes from the Comptroller sitting next to me but it's possible that I got busted.
It's cool though.
Every time I meet with that dude, we have that instant recognition that two secret freaks have.
You know.
The people who you see during the day and when you hear, "She's going out for derby" or "He went to Berkley," you kind of go, "Really? I would never have guessed that."
And you would mean it.
Mr.. Comptroller and I have a quiet understanding of each other after several years of meetings together.
If he sees me doodling the name of my One True Love, he says nothing and when I see him drawing pictures of boobs with accounting equation tattoos, I say nothing.

What else can you do when you are being held prisoner by a crazy-eyed salesperson who is seriously an oaf and who really, really loves Jesus?

I mean.... his crazy eyes light up in that special way when he starts thinking Jesus.

He loves Jesus in such a way that you instinctively do not say the word "god" under ANY circumstances.
Not "Thank god!." Not "Oh god!" not "Amen" and certainly not, "Let's join hands and walk to Jesus".
Unfortunately, that last one has been the latest thing I've been saying when I want to make daytime people laugh. It made me laugh the first time I heard it and it works especially well if you sort of roll your eyes heaven-ward in an angel-pose.
I should add that the first time I heard it was from this executive secretary at this place where I worked in Springfield. A few months into working there, she blamed a massive mistake on me that I had nothing to do with and it was weird... like, it was something that everyone in the office knew I couldn't have anything to do with because I wasn't there enough. I was the student intern, you know? So that happens and I have no idea about it but she must have gotten in trouble for it and she came up to me while I was sorting the mail and she told me that she was going to kill me if I said another goddamn thing.

She was serious. I was terrified. It was so out of context and so threatening and I just had not idea what was going on. Plus, we got along, she and I. It turned out that she had a brain tumor that was starting to affect her emotions and her impulse controls. I had to do this debriefing thing with the facility and people briefly felt sorry for me so I got to answer the phones instead of just filing all day long. After she left, they went to temps to try to find a replacement. The first one had issues with bladder infections and also with working there so then the next one didn't get that she was a temp and I was an employee. She had some control issues,mainly in that she wanted to be in total control of me when by then, the school year was three-quarters completed. There was no reason for her to expect me to pull back from the mailing projects I was doing for directors and the hanging out I did with the stage manager in order to be a temp's bitch. By the time that lady got there, I was working not just for the admin staf but for whomever needed stuff sorted or mailed or filed or organized. I also spent a lot of time "filing" backstage. By filing, I mean I spent a lot of time looking at pictures and sitting quietly in the huge, dark auditorium and wondering how many other people who worked there were probably doing the same thing but on the mezzanine or the balcony. She would call for me and I would be doing work she didn't know about and over all.... I was glad when the school year ended and I went on to the next thing.

Joining hands and walking to Jesus... maybe it's a you-had-to-be-there thing. But if you need a line, try that one.
Believe me.
People will laugh if they're not crazy-eyed from brain disease or from god-loving.
Even I am not stupid enough to make that mistake and say that shit to a god-lover with crazy eyes. I'm not an instigator like that. Not at work anyway.
Not only would I have to listen to things that I know aren't true but I would also have to hear about how great getting saved is.

Huh.
There's something wrong with that sentence and I can't quite put my finger on it.

arizonasarah at 4:25 p.m.

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