If you use the Internet then you may have seen the color
guard snafu that was featured on November 21st. The man saved his
dignity with some fast thinking and quick action. He is lucky: I’m never lucky.
I remember years ago on a beautiful spring day, the first of
that year, it was in early April and I was a single guy with a new job, in the
heart of NYC. I had arrived and was in a particularly elevated mood. It was a
Friday late morning as I took my paycheck that included a huge increase in my
salary and headed to the bank to cash and deposit some of it.
As I walked I took in the beautiful spring day, a feeling of
lightness in my loafers as they say and approached the bank on 55th
Street and climbed the steps to the revolving door. I wasn’t paying attention.
As I entered the revolving door, I soon realized I was not
alone! There in the same compartment with me was a little old lady, how she got
there I do not know! Standing on my toes and trying to make my self invisible
while tip-toeing behind her, we arrive in the bank and she screams out: “CAN’T
A WOMAN GET THROUGH THIS CITY WITHOUT BEING MOLESTED?” The horrifying thing is
she was about 85 years old at the time!
Then there was the time of mistaken identity.
The genius that I am, I can’t tell my old neighbor that
lived across the street from me from the church organist, a woman I had never
spoken to. One Saturday afternoon as TLW (The Little Woman) and I were shopping
in Home Depot, when I came across these two women, one of which I though was an
old neighbor who had moved to Florida. I immediately went over to her, joked
about Florida and how she must have made up her mind that she missed me. The
church organist looked at me in fear, her eyes shifting and her friend looking
equally scared.
In the background I could hear TLW gently but with urgency
calling: “Joe!” “Joe!” “Joe!” TLW was trying to save me from myself.
Slowly I stopped talking, removing one toe after the other
until all I could taste was my heel and backed away, the church organist
dumbfounded, her friend looking from me to the organist.
Turning around, I could feel the woman’s eyes on my back, and
the embarrassment of my wife and how she must have felt. I don’t know if it was
my surprise at who I thought I saw, my friendliness, or just my stupidity, but
boy, what a dumb ass I was!
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