is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
The ghost of bearded man past
Monday, August 20, 2007 I was in the middle of writing about the dude from the coffee shop who was a serious professional impediment on Thursday -- the guy with the not-so-casually-maintained beard sculpted, trimmed and scruffied up to look casually-maintained -- when I got one of my bouts of Blog ADD (if you do not identify, please feel free to email me offline with your kindly web-friendly doctor's name or website where the anti-website-skippy drugs are doled out "legally" to post office boxes) where I can't possible write more than a paragraph without popping over to see what other mamas and papas are blogging about today too. It's like high school. But not like high school in this sense as much as high school in the way that no one has ever, ever, ever in the history of secondary education taken a French test that wasn't in some way a collective effort. That said, I stumbled upon CityMama's frustrating/flirtatious/Mary Catherine Gallagher in Starbucks experience and felt for a moment like we had maybe had a cosmically similar experience last week. And then I knew for sure that bearded dude must be blogged.
Let me first take you back about six months to the cafe where I sit, drink coffee, eat homemade hummus, chat with the owners and zone out the noise from the street to blog about important and socially-relevant things like songs about poop.
The cafe is next door to a hair salon that I tried three times before deciding that maybe I myself have an inner stylist who can work miracles on premature gray and who charges a lot less to make a grrrl feel good about my semi-curly, sometimes-straight, remnant-highlighted, sort of-Poshed-out coif. Before I went rogue, I was waiting for the stylist to show up for my appointment (another reason to love my inner stylist, her timing's impeccable) and so I went over to the cafe to get a cup of coffee, sit by the fireplace and read my book.
I sat in a big, overstuffed chair and next to me, beard guy was sitting on the couch, intently listening to the Grateful Dead live show projected on the screen above the fireplace (classy, huh?) and hammering away on his iMac. He nodded, I gave a half-hearted smile.
Within a half-minute, he threw out a random fact about the Grateful Dead to me, clearly meant to engage me in further conversation about painfully long guitar solos and pit hair and "the most righteous lyricists of all time" -- all things I didn't even give a crap about when I lived in Oregon and actually owned a nice collection of Grateful Dead CDs.
The thing is, he didn't leave it at that. He just went on and on and I zoned out in a conversation-induced patchouli haze. You know what I don't want to talk about? Ever? The Grateful Dead. Except to say this one little fact that I like to oh-so casually throw down to stump various bearded guys who get a little too friendly over the coveted set list from Nassau Coliseum, October 31st, 1979. And so, like a good little China Cat, I said it.
"I was at Jerry Garcia's last show."
It worked like a charm. He stopped his low-talking short and looked up.
"Here? Righhhht. On. Sister."
And then the kicker.
"Yup, first and last show."
"You only went to one show?!"
You see, the beauty is, it pains 'em every single time.
"Only one."
If I'm feeling particularly funny (at least to myself...oh, and now the inner stylist because she thinks I am freaking hilarious), I throw in that I did make sure to buy a t-shirt, though.
I smile innocently as the pained look spreads across their face. I like to think that they were either on the road with Phish that summer or that I've just embodied the most revolting vision of a sorority grrrl gone Dead Head that they can conjure up to negativity of over a sweet little buzz.That t-shirt thing, it's like a knife to the Jack A Roe.
