Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind
Call them Less Than Satisfying Encounters With Humanity, or LTSEWH, for short. Only the names have been omitted to protect the inscrutable.
LTSEWH No. 1: I spied a nice gray fedora-like hat with an ornate Peruvian hatband just inside the doorway of a trendy gift shop. It was fairly trumpeting for attention; plainly intended as customer bait. You couldn’t miss it.
I stepped inside to try it on. (I like hats.) Reaching for the brim, I read a small white card stuck in the band. “THIS HAT FOR DISPLAY ONLY. CUSTOMERS PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THIS HAT!” Whoops. Instinctively, my hand jerked away. I’m a law-abiding citizen. I ventured deeper into the store, in search of hat brethren. (Perhaps that was the function of the hat--a kind of mute shill to draw suckers like me inside!)
“Can I help you, sir?” came the slightly defensive squeak of a pixieish female salesclerk, emerging between racks of dresses and candleholders.
“Yes,” I said, smiling, “Do you have any more hats like the one up front, which I’m not supposed to touch?”
She pointed to a stack of similar head wear that I’d just scanned, and rejected. No gray ones.
“Yes, but those are all red. I wanted to try on a gray one,” I said.
She told me they had no gray ones except the one that I couldn’t touch. The rest of the exchange, like many daily events, was straight out of “Seinfeld.”
“I can’t try on the one up front?” I foolishly persisted.
“No, that’s display only,” she said. “What size do you wear?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to try it on.”
“Why don’t you try on one of the red ones?” she said testily.
“I don’t want a red one. I like gray. I wanted to try on the gray one up front, but your store is determined that no one can touch it, right?”
Right.
I guess I was laughing at this point. Rude of me.
“Well, thanks anyway.”
At last, realizing a potential sale was evaporating, she grudgingly walked to the gray hat and . . . looked at its size. “It’s a 7 1/3,” she said. “Would that fit you?” Still, I was being denied the hallowed privilege of trying it on. Did the hat carry disease? Did I?
“I don’t know,” I repeated. “That’s why I wanted to try it on.”
At last, the magic moment came. She handed the gray hat to me, haltingly, frowning. I needed a fanfare, or a drumroll, or the theme music from “The Twilight Zone.” I accepted the Sacred Ceremonial Display-Only Gray Hat, and carefully lowered it. Nope. Way too small!
“Thanks for all your help,” I smiled.
Yes, she actually said it: “You’re welcome.”
LTSEWH No. 2: He looked either lost, or like he was casing my apartment building.
“Can I help you?” I said, walking to my car, parked in the driveway.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Which way is Palm Springs?”
This would have been a reasonable question, except that we were in Sherman Oaks--roughly 90 miles and 20 degrees Fahrenheit away. The wanderer was dressed neatly in jeans and print shirt, and carried a small backpack. His accent placed him somewhere around Panama or Guatemala, as near as I could tell. He looked to be in his late 20s.
“Uhh, Palm Springs?” I ventured. “You’re in Sherman Oaks.”
“I know where I am,” he said brusquely. “Which way to Palm Springs?” I looked around for Eric Idle or Michael Palin. The encounter reminded me of that scene in the Beatles’ “Help!” where the lost marathon swimmer keeps emerging from oceans and icy rivers asking, “White Cliffs of Dover?”
“Uhh, well, Palm Springs is probably . . . uhh . . . that way.”
I pointed vaguely southeast. “But it’s a long, long way.”
“I know. I can walk there--four days!”
“Walk, umm. Gee, you can catch a bus, you know. Greyhound?”
“I came from Palm Springs. I took Greyhound. That’s how I am here. Ticket too much money!”
Yikes! I had obviously walked right into a scam. Next would come the request for “a few dollars to help me out.”
“Look pal, I’d like to help you, but I really can’t.”
The wanderer’s eyes caught fire. He bristled with pride and indignation. Or something.
“I don’t want your help! No help! I walk to Palm Springs in four days!”
And away he went.
LTSEWH No. 3: Yes, I am one who has fallen prey to that ruse about canola oil and theater popcorn. You know, just because they’re using a less fatty oil, therefore popcorn is good for you! So I always ask the concessionaire . . .
“Hi, what kind of oil do you use on your popcorn?”
“Pardon me?”
She was about 18, pretty as an apple tree, dressed smartly in the quasi-military garb of her theater chain. Epaulets.
“What kind of oil do you pop your popcorn with?”
“What kind of oil?”
“Right,” I sighed. “Different theaters use different oils.”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said, looking as if she was trying to decide if I was dangerous.
“Can you please find out?” She moved away uncertainly, as if she suspected a practical joke, then consulted another employee. They both glanced at me warily as they conferred. At last, I got my answer:
“Uhh, sir? We use granola oil.”
Hey, now that sounded healthy.
LTSEWH No. 4:
“Hey, buddy!”
The guy was leaning out the driver’s side window of his new Oldsmobile, on a side street in Westwood. I was walking down the sidewalk, minding my own business.
“Hey, buddy!”
You can ignore one “Hey, buddy” but not two. I looked up.
“Is Marilyn Monroe buried around here?”
It’s the kind of scene that belongs in the opening of a hard-boiled L.A. detective novel, or a bad movie of the week.
“Yes, she is,” I answered politely. “Take the second left, then turn into a parking garage driveway and take the first right. There’s a little cemetery there where you’ll find her resting place.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Why’s she buried there?”
I resisted an urge to say, “So boneheads like you have a hard time finding her,” and shrugged him off with a courteous, “Don’t know.”
After all, he’d called me “buddy.”
