Sometimes you have to wonder what they put in the water around here . . . or at least on one corner around here.
A day or so ago as I was leaving my local gym I caught the tail end of a verbal altercation involving the resident masseuse (no kidding) and some big lug who followed her in off the street to give her a tongue-lashing for her poor parking job somewhere in the vicinity. Well, it seems that despite English being her second language, she gave as a good as she got in the tongue-lashing department, though her grasp of English idioms left me scratching my head. I’m pretty sure that what I heard was the lug offering as his lame parting shot, “Well, you need to get your eyes checked,” and the masseuse retorting: “Yeah . . . and maybe my ears checked too.” And then as the door clicked behind him, she muttered something about his needing a “psychologiste” . . .
Hey, he might have needed more than that if he had really gotten into it with her. And I’m not alluding to the trio of her fitness-freak co-workers—one of them a competitive bodybuilder—who happened to be in the gym’s lobby when the lug came in to make his point about her parking skills. A month or so ago I happened to have a handshake with the masseuse at an evening social event at the gym—and I thought I would need reconstructive surgery afterwards: I have never felt such a steely grip! Combine that with her Eastern European accent and she would certainly warrant a casting call back for any James Bond flick I’ve ever seen. Scary . . . That lug doesn’t know how lucky he is that he got away with just a tongue-lashing . . .
And then an hour later I was directly across the street at my local Bank of America. I had parked right in front of the door and when I came out the guard caught my eye .
. . and then my ear. Nodding at the John Lennon “Give Peace a Chance” bumper sticker on the rear end of my car, he said: “I’ve always wanted to talk to someone about that . . .” I guess he took eye contact as encouragement, as he proceeded to give me a little lecture about the limited virtue of peace as a global goal. Hmmm. Did I mention that he had a pistol holstered on his hip? And that I didn’t have one on mine? Discretion being the better part of valor, I nonetheless suggested that he give a listen to Lennon’s anthemic song “Imagine”: “You may say that I’m a dreamer / but I’m not the only one . . .” Maybe I should have resisted adding that I had put the bumper sticker on my car during the last Bush administration. But I didn’t . . . which gave him the opening to say, “Well, I don’t like the yahoo we’ve got in office right now.” Shrugging, I suggested that the real “yahoo” was his predecessor, who left us in our current global mess. Should I mention that as I got into my car, I glanced across the street at the gym, hoping that the steel-fingered masseuse would have my back if this conversation went much further? But it didn’t . . . Imagine.
A day or so ago as I was leaving my local gym I caught the tail end of a verbal altercation involving the resident masseuse (no kidding) and some big lug who followed her in off the street to give her a tongue-lashing for her poor parking job somewhere in the vicinity. Well, it seems that despite English being her second language, she gave as a good as she got in the tongue-lashing department, though her grasp of English idioms left me scratching my head. I’m pretty sure that what I heard was the lug offering as his lame parting shot, “Well, you need to get your eyes checked,” and the masseuse retorting: “Yeah . . . and maybe my ears checked too.” And then as the door clicked behind him, she muttered something about his needing a “psychologiste” . . .
Hey, he might have needed more than that if he had really gotten into it with her. And I’m not alluding to the trio of her fitness-freak co-workers—one of them a competitive bodybuilder—who happened to be in the gym’s lobby when the lug came in to make his point about her parking skills. A month or so ago I happened to have a handshake with the masseuse at an evening social event at the gym—and I thought I would need reconstructive surgery afterwards: I have never felt such a steely grip! Combine that with her Eastern European accent and she would certainly warrant a casting call back for any James Bond flick I’ve ever seen. Scary . . . That lug doesn’t know how lucky he is that he got away with just a tongue-lashing . . .
And then an hour later I was directly across the street at my local Bank of America. I had parked right in front of the door and when I came out the guard caught my eye .
. . and then my ear. Nodding at the John Lennon “Give Peace a Chance” bumper sticker on the rear end of my car, he said: “I’ve always wanted to talk to someone about that . . .” I guess he took eye contact as encouragement, as he proceeded to give me a little lecture about the limited virtue of peace as a global goal. Hmmm. Did I mention that he had a pistol holstered on his hip? And that I didn’t have one on mine? Discretion being the better part of valor, I nonetheless suggested that he give a listen to Lennon’s anthemic song “Imagine”: “You may say that I’m a dreamer / but I’m not the only one . . .” Maybe I should have resisted adding that I had put the bumper sticker on my car during the last Bush administration. But I didn’t . . . which gave him the opening to say, “Well, I don’t like the yahoo we’ve got in office right now.” Shrugging, I suggested that the real “yahoo” was his predecessor, who left us in our current global mess. Should I mention that as I got into my car, I glanced across the street at the gym, hoping that the steel-fingered masseuse would have my back if this conversation went much further? But it didn’t . . . Imagine.
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