A young friend was telling me about a recent embarrassment that reddened her face and shrunk her confidence. She was at her job nattering away about a boss she said none of her co-workers like either. Unfortunately, despite her interlocutor's suddenly rolling eyes, she didn't stop talking about that boss even though he'd walked over and was standing right behind her.
"I could have died," she said.
I can sympathize. Who among us hasn't gotten egg on our face? In an attempt to cheer her up, I started telling about some of my own wish-I-could-forget-that moments.
Of course, such moments can be fun if you're on the right end of them.
Once, years ago, not long after I'd been honorably discharged from Uncle Sam's forces, I walked into a car dealer's Midwestern showroom to buy a new car. I had $3,500 in cash and, God knows why, I wanted to spend it on a new Gremlin.
I liked the way the car looked. Not many years later, I wanted a new Pacer, too. The majority of people evidently thought these cars were ugly (they didn't sell all that well), but for some reason they looked really nice and stylish to me. The Gremlin and, even more so, the Pacer looked the way a car would look if ever I designed one.
Anyway, since Uncle had forced me to keep my hair close-cropped through the late '60s, when everyone else was letting their locks curl over the collar, I didn't go to a barber for quite awhile once I was demobbed. My hair was halfway down my back, and my raging beard was so full Hell's Angels smiled when they saw me on the street. Also, on my 1973 car-buying mission I sported a diamond earring (long gone in a Utah pawnshop).
I thought I looked pretty cool, but to the uptight, balding, suit-and-tied car dealer I must have looked like a pirate or, worse, a potential armed robber. He sniffed at me and sent over a young black woman, the only salesperson of color on the staff.
Literally within seconds I picked out a brown Gremlin and pulled a wad of hundreds from my back jeans pocket to pay for it in cash - something I'd always wanted to do.
Suddenly, the owner-dealer was at my elbow. "I'll handle this," he told the young woman, whose eyes were saucering at the thought of her easiest commission of the year.
I'll never forget the look on the man's face when I said, "I buy it from her or I don't buy it."
"Of course, sir," he said, stammering and backing up at the same time.
I enjoyed replaying that moment behind my eyes the entire five years I drove the Brown Bomb around Cincinnati.
I often wondered if my little sur-prise helped the guy do a little less judging by appearances during the remainder of his sales career. I doubt it, but it's nice to think on.
Another of those embarrassing moments - with me on the wrong end - cost me a friendship.
It was my first adult job right out of high school, as a laborer on the shop floor of a huge milling-machine back then, when divorce wasn't corroding a venerable American institution, it must have hurt him terribly.
I never thought anything of it. I was young and spending my weekend nights at the drive-ins with as many teenage girls as I could meet during my free time. And I bragged about all my semi-conquests, too. I wasn't a bright kid, but I was smart enough to know that my youth was the one and only thing I had that the older fellows who teased me unmercifully envied.
I can't remember how it started, but suddenly one morning, on the shop floor, Jim blew up at me. Maybe I brought him the wrong tool, or the wrong drink from the canteen. Either way, he scared the hell out of me. "Out back at 4:30," he said.
Out back at quitting time is where men went to settle their differences back before firearms featured in every argument. Twice I'd seen grown men come to blows in the parking lot and battle till one fellow surrendered to the other.
Jim was 6 foot tall and weighed more than 200 pounds. I was, at that time, maybe 5-9 and weighed 135 pounds soaking wet and fully clothed.
I looked around the circle of men right after Jim issued his ultimatum and found no sympathy in anyone's eyes.
The next few hours gave me some clue how men condemned to death by the state must feel. I knew the time of my impending demise. And I knew the way I would die. A grown man was going to beat me and my baby face to death.
About 10 minutes before the whistle blew, I shoved a ball-peen hammer into my jacket. I'd decided that if Jim was going to hurt me, I was going to hurt him first.
At 4:30 we were convoyed into the parking lot by half the guys in the factory. They all seemed to be in a damn cheery mood. When we reached the end of the parking lot, away from the eyes of the bosses, I turned suddenly - too suddenly - and the hammer fell onto the blacktop.
Jim's eyes changed. He had been extending his hand to me.
It was all a joke. Something to while away a long day. Teasing the loudmouth kid.
"You were going to hit me with a bleeping hammer?" he said. He had the same look in his eyes he featured when he talked about his divorce.
He half-ran to his car and drove away. Other than the barest of nods, he never talked to me again.
Work wasn't as much fun for me after that. People looked at me differently. I'd earned some odd kind of respect, but I'd traded the men's affection to gain it. I wasn't the mascot anymore. I wasn't the kid they lived vicariously through. I was one of them, somehow. And not too long after, I was drafted. Guys drifted up, shook my hand and wished me luck. And that was that.
I wonder to this day if I would have hit Jim in the head with the hammer if he'd carried the joke along even a few more seconds. It's not to my credit, but I believe I would have. The look on Jim's face when the hammer clattered to the blacktop is a memory that's never failed to cause me mingled pride, embarrassment and sadness whenever it pops up - as memories, if painful enough, often continue to do for years after the uncomfortable moment itself is over.
At last report, my friend still has her job, but she said she has trouble looking the boss in the eye. I know the feeling.
Feel free to e-mail Dennis Wilken c/o rtjameson@nwlink.com[[In-content Ad]]
