- Going into town being the trek it is, whenever I make
the drive from The Mountain to Paradise I try to go to as many places and
get as much done as I can.
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- In that way, yesterday was no different from any other
trip.
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- But in another, it was way different indeed.
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- First, I went to the Beauty Salon on the Square to pick
up some dry cleaning. The closest dry cleaner is 40 miles away from Cloud
Creek, and even when gas prices were lower that added a healthy surcharge
to the cleaning transaction. Fortunately, the cleaner has delivery places
scattered throughout the country's various smaller towns, and the Beauty
Salon is one of them.
-
- As long as I was in a place created for the express purpose
of making people look better when they walked out than when they came in,
I got myself a quick haircut and some enjoyable conversation for a good
price. Which is to say that my hair looked pretty much the way I'd hoped
it would when Laurel the Haircutter was done, I heard about her coming-at-any-moment
grandchild (and the fact that this would make Laurel a grandmother at 34),
and I forked over just one measly little $10 bill.
-
- From there I tooled over to the discount store where
Maya the Good works as a part-time manager, looking for some dog toys.
Specifically, I wanted a Frisbie for Dixie Maya's Sister Whose Current
Incarnation Is A Lab. The store had no Frisbies, though, so I settled for
a ball made of a petroleum substance masquerading as rubber.
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- My next stop was Paradise Pharmacy, which is more variety
store than drug store. It's a lot like Walgreen's, but not Walgreen's as
currently constituted. More like Walgreen's 50 years ago, when I was a
kid. Small. Faded. Mazelike. Crowded with fascinating products I'd thought
had been discontinued long ago.
-
- A Frisbie, however, wasn't one of 'em. Oh no.
-
- I picked up a prescription Gwen the Beautiful had called-in
earlier, decided to let myself go with some chocolate milk. Chocolate whole
milk, not that thin, watery, 2 percent stuff. That's what made it letting
myself go.
-
- Then, armed with my two purchases, I went to the checkout
counter and something that'd never happened to me before nailed me right
between the eyes.
-
- As usual, I counted out exact change. It's a game I play
with myself, seeing if I can get all those pesty pennies, nickels, dimes,
and quarters out of my pocket at a randomly chosen time.
-
- The day was a bright one, so I wore clip-on sunglasses
over my regular ones. The combination of the sunglasses and my increasing
farsightedness (the glasses are for distance viewing only) made it almost
impossible for me to see the coins in my hand, but I faked it.
-
- Badly.
-
- The Checker, a pretty 18-year-old so new at the job that
her smile was genuine, took what I handed her. Counted. Pointed to one
of the coins. Looked back up at me.
-
- "Oh, honey, I'm sorry," she said in a sweet,
understanding voice I hadn't heard since I was 6 years old and buying my
own ice cream cone for the first time.
-
- "This isn't a quarter," she went on. "It's
a nickel. Do you have a quarter?"
-
- I stared. The Checker misunderstood.
-
- "The quarters are the bigger ones," she said.
-
- Time stopped. At that moment only two people existed
in the world. A young woman trying to be gentle and kind - and the doddering
old codger who was so out of it he couldn't even tell his change apart.
-
- AKA: Me.
-
- I saw the situation for what it was:
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- A Big Moment.
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- A Big Bad Moment.
-
- And, for that Big Bad Moment, I felt the way I had when
I was 6 years old and buying my first ice cream cone and listening to the
sweet lady tell me I'd gotten it wrong.
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- Like crying.
-
- No! I thought. No! I'm not an old man! I'm young and
virile and handsome and smart and I know the difference between a quarter
and a nickel! I swear!
-
- But all I said was, "Thanks, I'll remember that."
-
- When I got home I told Gwen what'd happened. "Reckon
I'm not the man I used to be," I sighed.
-
- She said, "You are to me."
-
- She held out her arms, and I stepped into them with ease.
-
-
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- Copyright C 2008 by Larry Brody. All rights reserved.
-
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- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at <mailto:LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org>LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
Brody, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion
County, Arkansas. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise
reside in his imagination.
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