Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Recipient:
Evelyn @ Duffeyroll, Platt Park
I've said it once, and I'll say it again 'cause it's still true:
Extroverts make terrible hermits.
The reason for the repeat?
Today is Tuesday.
The last time I left the house was Friday.
Yes, it was raining for many of those intervening hours, like Denver (CO) decided to take a page out of Worcester's (MA) book, and that made it easy to stay inside. I was also feeling somewhat unmoored. Giving notice at my busy and stressful job was a positive step. I had been adding new pieces to the personal development puzzle -- Morning Pages, journal writing prompts from Don't Keep Your Day Job, Body Groove, meditation. All good stuff. Still, it left enough time for uncertainty to creep up and develop into lethargy. There were a couple of days when I sat back and binge-watched a goodly number of Cold Case episodes until I realized two things:
One, I really needed a shower.
Two, I really needed to get out into the world again.
This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but people will not show up on your doorstep willy-nilly and present you with opportunities to give them BRIGHT SPOT Awards. You (and when I say 'you' I mean 'me') must open the front door, point yourself in a direction, and start walking.
That's exactly what I did. I walked up to Duffeyroll and ordered some breakfast.
I sat. I ate my breakfast sandwich. I drank my coffee. I nibbled on my mini Duffeyroll. I stared at the hundreds of photographs of smiling patrons past. Then a worrisome thought intruded on my quiet reflection:
There is no award-worthy moment.
And because worrisome thoughts are not content to remain alone, the first thought invited a bunch of other worrisome thoughts over for a nice game of canasta and also to send me into early-stage freaked-outedness.
What if there are no more moments? What if I am putting out negative vibes and that's why the opportunities are not arriving? Am I losing my capacity for joy? Am I now so out of practice that there's no flavor left, like the last two sips of a Frappucino which tastes like melted ice plus a trace of mocha that's barely a memory plus sadness?
This is when I noticed the arrow on the picture.
I had seen the picture of the young woman in the Duffeyroll t-shirt, only now I could see the arrow pointing to a photo in the background, which is a photo of her as a little girl.
Something about this just tickled me pink and got my thinker pinging with questions. What's the story? How old are the pictures? Is she an employee or just a patron who bought the t-shirt?
I was looking around for someone to ask when I saw Evelyn, who had been working earlier and now happened to be sitting a few seats down at the big red counter on her break. I thought how funny it would be if she was the actual person.
She was not, but that got us into a conversation about pictures -- if the owner still photographs the customers (yes he does, sometimes), if people are more willing to be photographed (in this Age of the Selfie) or if they are less willing -- and off on tangents like how strange it is that people used to ask each other all manner of personal information to put into their address books and nobody batted an eyelash or found it stalker-ish, the continuum of pace of life and where Denver fits as opposed to NYC or a little town in Tennessee, on and on. And then there it was, that molecule of joy, how lovely it is to share a moment of genuine conversation with another human, and how it can turn the filter through which you're viewing the world at that moment a little brighter.
(I also want to mention for posterity's sake that it is she who suggested I bring the BSAs to TikTok, in the event I ever do such a thing. I'd definitely want her to get the credit for the idea.)
