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March 17, 2006
Happy Endings
I assume people like me when they meet me.
I think this for several reasons. I think I'm honest. I know I'm not trying to bullshit people when they meet me. I assume people can tell this about me when they meet me. It takes less work to like someone than it does to dislike them, or even feel indifferent about them (which is closer to disliking them than it is liking them).
I don't think people are lazy when it comes to meeting new people. But why make things any harder than they have to be.
I once read something about that guy who was the first Bush's VP. Rats. What was his name. Young guy. Wife sorta had a Laura Petrie hairdo. They made a spelling mistake on a Christmas card. Man I can see his face ... I just can't get the name.
Anyway, he may have been a pretty good guy despite all the flack he took while VP. What I remember reading -- and this is my interpretation -- is that he sort of accepted things that were going on in their best light. If something happened, and there were two ways to see it, one way making someone out to be a rude sonuvabitch and the other way requiring giving a person the benefit of the doubt in order to not see him as a sonuvabitch, he'd go with the benefit of the doubt.
Day Quayle. That's it.
There was a sort of polite innocence about him. I think we were too rough on him while he was VP.
If you've read over the entries the last two days you'll notice I had some polite innocence with regard to my experience with Bad Date. Of course, I took polite innocence to the extreme and tripped right into social buffoonery as I assumed, time and time again, that Bad Date was just not seeing me as we all but slam danced into each other on campus.
Two years later -- two years after I graduated ... two years after she called me "ass hole" -- one of my thug friends (Jeff) and I went back to Miami for a visit. As we walked past one of the bars (One of the ones in the alley. What the hell was it called? Dan Quayle's Bar and Grill. Not likely) I saw Bad Date working the door checking IDs. She would have been a senior.
Not only do I think people like me, I think they eventually forgive me if at one time they hated me. Polite innocence? Maybe. Idiocy? Who knows.
"Hey," I said as I approached her. "Do you remember me?"
"You look familiar," she said. Maybe she recognized me right away as the ass hole. Maybe she recognized me in a vague out-of-context sort of way.
"You called me 'ass hole' in Lottie Moon's two years ago."
"Oh yea," she said laughing. "How have you been?"
We chatted briefly and laughed at the incident. After a short while Jeff and I took off up the alley.
After about ten steps a raw egg hit me in the back of the head. Did Bad Date throw it? I'm inclined to think a Canadian Goose on a fly by let it drop from the heavens. Polite innocence? Maybe. Idiocy? Probably.
Okay. There was no egg.
(I believe the bar was CJ's. Which would have been what is was called back then. If not CJ's, then the bar across from it. Which, now, has a new name. Here's the Google link.)
Posted by delmer at March 17, 2006 8:07 AM
Comments
Forgive and forget.
One of my favorite Dan Quayle mistakes was when he was at a dinner for NASA and he said:
"My fellow astronauts..."
Posted by: The Phoenix at March 17, 2006 10:28 AM