brigdh

Happy birthday, weirdquark!
<3 Hope you have a great one. And I bet you thought mentioning that to me the other week wouldn't have any consequences. ;)

On a different topic entirely, because I'm too lazy to make another post, I'm going to tell a story. I was reminded of it earlier today and I don't think I ever told it here, so... why not.

I worked at a candy store for several months recently, and one of my co-workers was an old woman, late fifties/early sixties or thereabouts. I hated working with her, because she would inevitably take the time to give me the entire plot description, including summaries of commercials and the cast list's previous appearances, for whatever movie happened to be showing later that night on the Hallmark channel.

I don't think I even have the Hallmark channel.

Anyway, one day I was working with her, and an ad came on the radio for our local pediatrics hospital, which is called, appropriately enough, Children's. (I have a whole other story about her and the radio, actually, but I'll summarize thusly: "She's crazy" and move on.) "That's a wonderful place, you know," she said out of nowhere. "One of the best. It's got all sorts of amazing doctors and they can do just about anything. Really."

"I know," I said, mainly because I was annoyed with her treating me like I was a tourist to the city where'd I'd lived my entire life. A young, *stupid*, tourist. "I had to have five surgeries immediately after I was born and one of the few people in the world who specialized in what I needed happened to be working there."

"Oh."

Now normally, when someone mentions that they had multiple surgeries as an infant, polite people will inquire further. Or, you know, offer sympathy. But no, that was apparently the end of our conversation. I wasn't offended- in fact, the less I had to talk to this woman, the better- but it was different.

An hour passed. I don't mean that it seemed like an hour, or that some time passed, but literally at least an hour went by. Customers came in, bought stuff and left; we wrapped several sets of gift boxes; I answered the phone a few times. And then she suddenly turned to me and said, "Why did you have all those surgeries?"

I paused, looked up from where I was on the other side of the store, and resisted the urge to say huh? Once I remembered what she was talking about, I replied: "I'm blind in my right eye. They thought they could fix it."

She thought about this for a moment. Then she said: "I'm sorry! Could you use the calculator?"

Having talked to her before, I was used to needing my full attention to understand what was happening. But this was beyond me. Did you ever have one of those pauses in conversation where you just can not figure out what the other person has said, or why they said it, or how you should respond, and your mind goes completely blank? Yeah. "I- what? What calculator?"

"The one in the back that I asked you to use. I'm sorry. Could you use it?"

"Um... yeah?" She sounded so worried over this that for a moment I was worried, too. Maybe something had happened! Maybe the calculator was posioned! Maybe it was rigged to a bomb!

"Because the numbers on the buttons are really small," she said earnestly.

Or maybe she was just crazy. "Uh. I was okay."

She nodded, and was silent briefly. I, figuring that there was nothing left to say, started to do something else. But she turned back to me, and in the most you can do it, Johnny! You can hit that home run! voice I have ever heard, said: "You'll be fine, you know. As long as you get a job where you don't need both eyes."

I shouted, "What? Are you sure? Dammit! What about my dream of becoming a sniper assassin!?"

Okay, not really. But I should have. I think I actually muttered a thank you and tried not to laugh.

That's my story about weird coworkers. Tell me yours!

Also, my shirt today says "heroine". I thought you all should know that.