I was in the laundromat today, which is definitely where God would place me if I were to be cast into my own personal Hell. Somewhere in between watching my t-shirts spin round and round and nodding off, I observed an interesting meeting of two strangers who realized they had a common interest.
The 30 year old woman who was working the Thursday noon shift was engrossed in her soap opera, which I think was "All My Children." An older, possibly 45-50 year old woman was reading a book and waiting for her laundry to finish. They caught each other's eye and the younger woman (let's call her Joanne) started some small talk. "That Jeremy really makes me mad!" she says, pointing to the TV. The older woman (let's call her Angela) astonishingly says, "Yeah, I don't like Jeremy either! Are you a fan of the show?!" This ended up sparking a 15 minute conversation, where Angela asked many questions about Joanne's favorite characters and episodes, how long she had been a fan, and what she knew about the history of the show.
Throughout the conversation, a look of pride came over Angela every time she remembered the name of a character in the show from "back in the day." She explained to Joanne that most people don't remember the original family in the show from 25 years ago, which was the Steward family. "It all started with the Stewards...Johnny and Janice, and their son Jack. Jack was played by a young David Hassellhoff." (By the way, there's no way I got those names right. They are about as accurate as Joanne's and Angela's names.) Joanne spent the whole time answering Angela with "oh really," with her eyes going back and forth between Angela and the TV.
In the middle of Angela's trip down memory lane, she started to talk about a specific character that was killed off years ago. She got very frustrated with the fact that she couldn't remember the name of this character, and the conversation slowed as she sat and pondered. Angela then got up to move some clothes from the washer to the dryer, and sat down on the other end of the laundromat and started to read again. Two minutes later, she popped up, walked back over to the TV, and with a sparkle in her eye, said "It was Derek! That's the guy I couldn't remember! They killed him off. I really liked him." Joanne just said, "Oh OK, well I'm glad you remember his name." Obviously Joanne wasn't nearly as hardcore a fan as Angela. Angela went back to reading, finished up her laundry, and said goodbye to Joanne. Their half-hour relationship was over.
A couple things I noticed here:
1. When one person finds out that they have a common interest with someone, two things can happen. If the other person has the same level of interest as you, a very pleasant, exciting conversation between new friends happens. However, if the other person is far more interested in the topic than you are, you are put off by the fact that they are bragging about how much they know, and by how intense they are being. At the same time, if the other person is far less interested in the topic than you are, you are put off by the fact that they aren't as committed to the topic, and that they don't care enough to learn more.
2. One of the few moments of absolute joy that someone feels in life is when they remember an important event or person that used to be a part of their life. Our memories fail on us sometimes, and we feel incomplete and disappointed when we can't remember an old friend's name or the name of something we used to feel connected to. That moment of remembering is when we become complete again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The 'complete' feeling-moment of remembering happens to me when I finally remember a recipe ingredient from one of my mother's Italian dishes. My childhood returns, complete with a mental photo snapshot, very sharp and just like I was standing in Ma's kitchen. "The squid had ONIONS in it!" I remember in triumph, because my mother was a real Italian cook, i.e., never wrote anything down and invented by the 'taste as you go' method. This is exasperating to me and my siblings, as we have to rely almost totally on memory to replicate tastes. "Sticking with" the attempted memory search pays off when I can taste the childhood food, and the bonus, I hear, is fending off Alzheimer's disease, too. At my age, this could be important.....
Post a Comment