From our homie
Zack, who appreciates some old-fashioned manners:
Water bill, electric bill, mass-mailed crap: Meh, another typical day's mail. What's this, a letter from someone in Miami? I don't recognize the name. Who is she and how the devil did she get my address?
Upon reading the contents, the name finally clicks. I briefly met this girl when I drove down for my buddy's birthday party. I lent her a handkerchief when some drunk spilled his beer all over her.
And here it is, freshly laundered with a little thank you note. I'm floored. I've carried handkerchiefs for years and I can count on one finger the number of times someone has returned one. Now I'll have to re-learn cursive so I can pen a response.
She doesn't know me, she doesn't know where I live. Even our mutual friend doesn't know where I live. I'm playing Six Degrees trying to trace her back to one of the five friends who have my new address, and it is a minimum of four hops. That's a helluva lot of effort to return something that's cheaper than a latte.
Those are some seriously old-school manners. Did I fall asleep and wake up in an Austen novel? Does she have a chambermaid who did it for her? Did she read Miss Manners as a girl? If she also knows the correct answer to the question, "Do you have your pocketknife with you?" I will totally swoon, manliness be damned.
I won't mention this to my friend for fear he'll regale me with stories about her doing keg stands at the party and flashing the deejay. I'd hate to sully this perfect image I have of her. Just leave me here to pretend I met the only woman in Miami who didn't learn manners from watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
This is adorable. I'm not sure if I have good manners when I'm out with a guy. I say, "please," "thank you," and I tell the Internet when he fucks up our date. That's good manners, right?
1 comments:
Zack, yes they DO exist. I too saw one of these endangered animals while out on a hunt for some homestead necessities at the Market St Kmart one sultry afternoon. And although it was many months back, I can still today remember verbatim this "kitten's" kind exchange of pleasantries with the callous checkout girl and my feeling for that moment that I was stepping back in time & place and had become one Ashley Wilkes. It was definitely an old fashioned "missed connection" I won't soon forget.
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