Friday, March 02, 2007

Coincidence

I'm in a rambling mood. Maybe it's the full moon.

I remember the time Gail Wronsky, my poetry teacher in college, told me how much she liked a rhyme I made in some poem. The rhyme was moon and eyes. Her comment confused me for a long time.

I remember having to take off my jeans one summer day while walking from Kroger down Montrose to 29 Pinedale. I was wearing this long poet's shirt from CP Shades to protect my skin from the sun, and I idiotically wore jeans. I had taken the bus to Kroger, but it was a Saturday, and the 34 wasn't running much. Waiting at the bus stop near Kroger in the heat and humidity was already killing me, so why not, I thought, just walk to the next stop?

Because it's 99 degrees and 97% humidity! That's why.

Anyone doubt global warming? Spend 17 summers in a row in Houston, TX and then tell me global warming isn't happening. If you do, you can join my idiot club, because truly what kind of brainiac walks down Montrose in the summer in jeans and a long sleeve shirt? THIS KIND. I have my reasons. What are yours?

Regardless of the heat and humidity, I kept walking to the next stop, and the bus never arrived, so finally there was no bus stop between me and my apartment, and I realized I had pretty much walked three miles or so home. This realization woke me up to the debilitating heat rash I was suffering from. I had just walked under 59, and of course not even the shade could help me. I took off my jeans, hoping that my poet's shirt looked like a minidress (it covered my butt, but barely.) It would have been no big deal, really because who cares, right? I walked down Montrose wearing only a shirt and my underwear. Other people have probably walked down it completely naked. The problem was that Jerry Finger's new highrise on Montrose (near the Masonic Temple) was being built, and the construction crew was working on the facade. What kind of clichéd coincidence is that?

So when I walked by, I had not a bunch of guys looking at me, but like two out of twenty noticing me, and those two didn't even catcall. If I hadn't been so embarrassed, I would have felt humiliated.

I just remembered that Emily (of Emily and Tony who are leaving Sunday for their new life together in Kosovo; I need to hook them up with my friend the foreign service agent, I mean officer, who's moving to Macedonia) lived at 29 Pinedale, too.

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