More Snippets

Perry and I bought a very modern ceiling fan for our living room. A pair of electricians came by to install it. They spoke not a word of English.

The fan worked great until about three months later when it stopped altogether. After pondering the situation, we called the repair man.

He was only in the house for five minutes when he picked up the remote and announced that the batteries were dead.

“Oh,” I said. “I bet that happens all the time.”

“Nope, no it doesn’t. That’ll be $75.”

“Well, you know, looking after remotes and such is my husband’s job.”

He was not impressed but we were pissed that the batteries in the remote were so cheesy they ran out in three months.

After I was fired from the architectural firm, I did a little bit of work for a friend of a friend. Bijon was perhaps the most handsome man I’d ever known. He had escaped from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, though Bijon preferred the name Persia. He was a smart, charming man who kept his frightening experiences in his homeland under wraps most of the time. Bijon had an on-again-off-again relationship with a woman named Terry, who was studying to be a physician’s assistant. One day Terry and I were sitting in an alcove of Bijon’s small apartment. Apropos of nothing, she looked me in the eye and said, “I never wear underwear. It’s clean and fresh that way.” Um, how to respond? “Isn’t that nice!” While not the most brilliant response I ever came up with, it seemed to satisfy her. Perry and I moved into our house in 1986. Just then a lot of new building and renovations were going on down the street in an area once called Parkington but now renamed Ballston. Several modern buildings went up, along with bars and restaurants. A famous downtown bookstore/café named KramerBooks took a bite of the market and installed a café and sleek bar. The bar was very urban, all slick gray tones with small touches of color. One day we went in for drinks and found ourselves alone at the bar. We were enjoying our wine when a scrofulous old man shuffled in and sat about six seats from us. We carried on chatting until we heard some rather rude noises from this fellow, snorts, as well as huffs and puffs, as he stood on the rung of his stool.

He suddenly turned to us and in a thunderous voice snarled, “I Hate LIBERALS!” A fair amount of spit hit the counter and as quickly as he spoke, he started to settledback in his chair, rumbling and snorting for a couple of minutes as he deflated back into to a sitting position before returning to quietly sipping his beer. Perry and I looked at each other. “Is it something we wore?”