My body is rejecting the Midwest winter. I had a cold last month, and then this weekend I had another cold - again - and this is so unprecedented that I could not believe that I was actually getting sick until I went to bed on Friday night and woke up Sunday morning.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration, because I did wake up briefly on Saturday evening to rotate my head 360 degrees and cause a bottle of Minnesota State Fair Blue Ribbon Raspberry Vinegar to explode in my kitchen cabinets. It took me 10 minutes to figure out where all the shards of glass and raspberry came from when I stumbled onto the scene Sunday. What can I say - whoops. I claim innocence of other freak natural events, however. For example, I did not cause Lake Michigan to freeze solid on Friday night. That was caused by the failure of the boiler in my building.
The door to the boiler room was open this morning on my way out and, because I am mechanically obsessed, I barely paused to hitch up my stupid grin before asking if I could look around. The heaving rusted hatches of the reservoir encircle a 250 BTU horizontal pillar of flame and the damn thing was leaking everywhere. Obviously, this was like a dream come true and you can only imagine what a delightful good time we were having when the boiler, whimsically, decided to fire up. The workman standing nearest me, the senior of the pair, promptly turned to me and, his voice a complete Wisconsin deadpan, said “You better run for it.”
At first I thought he was joking and then I looked at his expression and realized he was completely serious. He seemed confused and perhaps a little scared that I was still standing next to him. In the time it took me to realize this, while my silly grin slid off my face, he had elaborated past predictions of shooting steam and gases and moved on to fire and brimstone, ending with the phrase “she’s gonna blow any second.” Now my silly grin was replaced by the maniacal one. I had a mental image of myself sprinting out the boiler room door, outdistancing a giant fireball, and I couldn’t suppress a mad little giggle. Meanwhile he and his colleague, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, were standing idly by less than three feet from the thing, armed only with large wrenches held limply at their sides. My curiosity was seriously piqued. Now I wanted to stand there just to see what would happen. You cannot imagine how displeased I was when my good manners won out and I slumped dejectedly and without flaming event out the door a few minutes later. That is testament to “Minnesota Nice” having a genetic component if ever one was needed.
The upshot of having been sick all weekend and sounding like total crap is that I’ve been lingering at home in the morning the last couple of days, working at a safe distance from people who would not be able to help me if I got them all sick, and soaking up some sunshine. It’s nice to be able to go in a bit later, because that way I see daylight once a day. And it’s especially beautiful daylight recently. And I like drinking my coffee at home. And because I’ve been sick, I didn’t ride my bicycle in to work this morning but instead took the bus. And who should I meet on the bus but the man of my dreams - Mr. Gladwell. He was tucked into the pages of my New Yorker and it was, as always, a delightful meeting.
It started, as it has in the past, with that first glimpse. That first sentence, the one in italics under the title. It’s always so logical, precise and yet tantalizing. And I’d gone all the way through the first section, a whole page, when I paused for a moment, thrilled - delighted - and remembered myself. I checked the tag-line and there he was. The whole thing was such a texture of clean logic and precise subtle language. The simple phrasing of specific people - placed there like jewels, and displayed so that the beauty and meaning seems to radiate out of them and make you wonder why you don’t take time to see people like that - really see them - and really hear them. It was like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed. I could feel my heart beating against the hand that held it.
0 Responses to “Malcolm strikes again”