Saturday Morning

Sadly, no one has blogged about Saturday for me and, as they said on MASH, it was a full rich day so I think I will break it up into parts.

I woke up on Sat. morning after 4 hours of sleep. I LOVE sleep. I was not terribly happy about the lack of sleep but I was meeting my boy for his soup kitchen and I also love his soup kitchen (where I am not responsible for anything and they praise me continually -- how can you refuse?!). I took the new book I was reading (thank you Sarah-Ly) Eat Pray Love and I was thoroughly enjoying my ride into town. So much so that the combination of sleep deprivation and book world caused me to miss my stop. I got out one stop past the stop I needed and called my boy and told him the situation. I asked if I should walk back or if I should wait for the train back (not being that familiar with the area). He paused for a moment and said you should just walk. As soon as I exited the station, I realized how wise that advice was. The exit from the station where I was, looked directly at the station where I was supposed to be and they were only about two blocks apart! I walked over to the correct station and we caught the bus that was just ready to leave (it couldn't have been timed more perfectly).

The soup kitchen experience this week was mixed. There were a lot more complaints about the food etc. (mind you it's a professional chef AND IT'S FREE) there were also a couple of complaints about my work (my coffee's cold etc. -- I took it personally, but as my boy pointed out a. I didn't actually make the coffee I just poured it and b. it was steaming). Also, one of my favorite women left early and never came back.

On the bright side, I did get to hear some great stories. One woman started talking to me about her husband who she had lost 25 years earlier. She talked about how he was in the hospital and he was dying and knew it and he scrawled a note to her that said "I'm dying, but I want you to know that I love you" and then she left the room when he passed away and a nurse threw out the note. She then went on to tell me some stories about her husband and her mother that were fun and interesting. Most of them involved how she was an only child but when she got married her mother would always take her husband's side and how she became the outsider.

Another man had a fancy watch and I asked him what all the dials did (anyone who knows me knows that I can't tell time with two hands let alone three hands and three extra dials). He told me the extra dials were for nano seconds and I asked if he really needed to know the time that exactly. Turns out he did. He is a photographer (just like my boy, only unlike my boy, he did it professionally for 40 years). I asked him how he got his start and he said he bought a camera when he was a kid and when he was done with the roll of film he threw it in a glass of water and was disappointed that nothing happened. The next week he bought a book about cameras for a dime and learned everything he could about them. He went on to go to photography school and in his career worked for aetna taking photographs of people committing health insurance fraud. He also did work photographing surgeries which were then published in a text book used at Harvard med school. He worked as a portrait artist in some studios and he also worked for the morgue, he said they were his best subjects you didn't have to worry about their eyes being closed. . . . The stories he told were fascinating and I was sorry when he had to move on and do something else (he is the most henpecked volunteer at this soup kitchen, someone asked why his wife never came and I said because he's bossed around enough without her and he just laughed).

The final story from the day came from a guy who has visited my coffee cart on Thursday nights. He's a talker and does a lot of Rodney Dangerfield bits when he talks but there was a point when he opened up more and gave me a peek into his life. He was talking about when he was 27 and was dating a 23 year old he would meet at the dances. They only ever spoke at the dances, but they would spend the whole night together. One night she called him at home and his dad told him a broad was on the phone for him. She apparently didn't like being called a broad, but calmed down enough to say to him, I really like you and when two people really like each other they talk about marriage. He said he wasn't in love with her. He didn't see her for weeks. He would go to their usual dance halls and she wasn't there. Finally he found her and she was with another guy. He was disappointed but still not in love with her. They talked and she said that she was looking for marriage. His story trailed off there and he said rather wistfully, she didn't play it right, if she had just waited a couple more months, I think I could have loved her enough to marry her. . . . . He then turned on me and asked why women insisted on marriage. He made the old joke about marriage being an institution and who wants to live in an institution and on that note we left.