Talk to Me

I'm thinking that when I stitch in public a neon sign lights up on my forehead, talk to me. The other day this drunk crazy guy started a conversation with me about the stitching. It's great, apparently, that I do it. I have a lot of patience. Yadda, yadda. He once flew to Europe first class on Pan Am. Ok, whatever, that was a long time ago, crazy drunk man. Then he tells me he was supposed to be on the Locherbie flight. Well, don't talk to me about supposed to be, I know someone who was on the flight. And that's when I started thinking.

This guy I worked with in New York, Judd, once told me that I wouldn't remember anyone I worked with at Plenum Publishing except for Crazy Alice; I was supposed to remember her above all others because she was crazy. Alice was the first person I ever met who I could identify as among the working poor. I was making $15K, so she had to have been making nothing. She once came to work with a huge bandage on her head. It was covering an open sore that she couldn't afford to have a doctor look at. That's when he told me that I would only remember Crazy Alice. But he was wrong. First, I remember him. I remember Sam and Jo and Michael and Jamie. It's true I'm a little hazy on the graphic designers. But we remember people by the remarkable things that happen.

Back to 1988. We worked together, Steve and I, doing telephone surveys and other market research. During the summer, we'd get sent to various malls and grocery stores to hand things out to be tested. Cherry Rolaids. Lightbulbs. Kudos bars. He was the best at handing out a million boxes of something and getting off early. He's the only guy I remember from that job, and I only remember him because he died in a most spectacular way while I was at home in the warm bosom of my family one Christmas. I don't remember anyone else from that job.

Okay, I remember the woman who used to drink in her car on breaks...and now we're back to the crazy drunks.

All that because I was stitching Happy Bunny Bunny Day on the bus.