ìI donít want to just follow Jesus around from a distance. That tells me nothing about what he and his followers are really like. I wish there was some way I could spend time among them, but they seem to be a closed circle.î Plus, as a member of the Sanhedrin I had to be careful about my associations, but I didnít need to mention this to Gamaliel.
He didnít look up from his scroll. He just said casually, ìDo you know whoís with them? Your friend from Magdala.î
ìMaryís son?î
ìNo.î
It couldnít be. ìMary?î
ìShe has found a new charity.î
ìButÖwhat about herÖ?î
ìMaybe you should try to see her yourself.î
I had met Mary Magdelene years ago. She was one of the most generous patrons to the school where I taught. Sheíd been married to a wealthy aromatic oils merchant; after he died their son took over the business and kept her well provided for. She went with him every year to Jerusalem for Passover. While in the city one year she discovered our school. She learned we wanted to seek out and teach poor students with a talent for the scribeís craft. Without any advance notice she began sending us whatever we needed for their room and board and supplies. Every time she came back to Jerusalem she visited the school and thus got to know the teachers.
I was fond of her. The first time we met was a day I was late getting to the school. I came in my room and this voice, harsh as a ravenís caw, challenged me: ìYour students wish to learn from someone. They deserve a teacher who will be here on time.î
I had been told a generous benefactress would be making a visit, so this strange womanís presence was not a shock. I looked at her lined face and in her sharp eyes and saw the hint of a smile. I said, ìWhat teacher they deserve matters little; I am the teacher they have. Let us begin with Leviticus today, class.î
From then on she greeted me with insults. She was fond of me too.
Mary Magdelene possessed a strange spirit; restless, intense. Though she came faithfully to crowded Jerusalem for the biggest festival of the year, she disliked being around so many people at once (she was there to humor her son, who used the occasion of a religious holiday to make business contacts). She spent much of the time in our quiet classrooms. Sheíd be foul-tempered on arrival and as demure as a kitten on departureóor the other way around. There was no way to predict it.
I spoke with her son about her sometimes when he came looking for her. ìMy fatherís death did this to her, I think,î he whispered to me when she was busy terrorizing a student. ìShe used to enjoy life so much more. Now she sleeps for days or walks the house for hours. When she is active, sheís furiously active, as if sheís making up for lost time. I wonder if she isnít ruled by contrary forces.î
The last time I saw Mary was the time she couldnít recognize me. She was standing in the street, staring up at the sky with her jaw slack and her frame trembling. I said ìMary!î She turned her face toward the sound of her name, but her eyes were dead blank.
ìIím so scared of it,î she said. ìIím so scared. Iím so scared.î Her voice was high and thin, a wind through reeds, nothing like her usual throaty tone. And still she shook so hard I wished I had a dozen blankets to wrap her in.
ìLook at me,î I begged, the hairs on my neck rising without my knowing why. ìItís me. Itís Nicodemus.î
ìIím so scared.î
When I tried to grab her by the shoulders (desperate for any way to help), she pulled back as if from fire, then turned and ran. I ran after her. I caught up with her on an unfamiliar street. She sank to the ground, alternately gulping air and wailing.
When her breath was back she knew me again. ìI saw the Angel of Death in the sky,î she confessed, head down and held in her hands. ìIt was huge and black. Its shadow covered everything. It wanted to swallow me up.î
I couldnít think what to say. We found our way back to where she and her son were staying. He pulled at my arm as I was leaving. ìThe priest has told me seven devilsówhy would any woman have seven devils, Nicodemus? Why would my mother? And what can I do?î
I couldnít think of anything to say to him either. They stopped visiting the school and I stopped hearing anything about how she was doing.
And now, it seemed, I could find her with Jesus.
The preacher, I determined through careful inquiry, had a base of operations in Capernaum near all the fishing boats. I set off for the town with the stated intention of recruiting new students. I visited the market several days before I saw her.
She looked just as I remembered, which was strange as she should have looked much older. Her eyes were still sharp but the lines around them curved differently; she was smiling more. She was at the head of a small army of women, arms laden with loaves.
ìMary!î I called. Her head turned. She gasped and walked over quickly, first handing her bread to her companions and issuing some kind of orders.
ìNicodemus! What are you doing here?î
I smiled. ìLooking for you.î
We walked the length of the market and back, almost shouting our catching-up stories to be heard over the criers at the stalls. I kept getting distracted by the smells of the fruitóI hadnít eatenóand finally bought some grapes to feast on with my old friend.
She must have known what I really wanted to ask. ìIím cured, Nicodemus. Jesus cured me.î
ìWhat did he do?î
ìI donít know,î she admitted with a laugh. (It was so good to hear her laugh.) ìBut the devils are gone. I no longer see terrors in the sky or hear things other people canít. Even my rest is better. I donít sleep a full day anymore.î
îAnd now you are a disciple?î
ìI take care of them. I organized a group of womenómostly widows like me, women of means. We travel with Jesus and the apostles making sure they have enough to eat; we arrange places for everyone to stay as they go from town to town. They are not themselves practical, weíve found. Oh, Jesus is very practical, but all the rest have been taken care of by their women all their lives. They donít know the first thing about providing for their survival.î
ìBut you say Jesus does?î
ìOh, yes,î she said with another laugh. ìJesus knows the first thing. He knows who to ask for help!î
She took another grape, chewing it slowly, watching the crowds as they jostled past. I realized suddenly what I was seeing. ìCrowds donít bother you anymore?î
She shook her head. ìI am determined that nothing will bother me anymore. Itís hard work but thatís what I want.
ìYou know what remember about being cured? Hearing Jesusí voice saying, ëYouíre free.í I remember thinking, ëI donít know what that word means.í Itís what I intend to find out. I will not live like a captive. I will live a deliberate life, now that Iíve been given the chance.î She gave me a challenge with her eyes just like she used to. Many a time Iíd withered under that glare. ìSo what about you, Nicodemus? Youíre not here to see an old woman, with or without devils.î
ìYouíre not an old woman.î
ìIím older than you, and youíre not young.î
ìNot as young as your current traveling companions.î
ìOh!î she shrieked in mock rage. ìI see what you think of me!î
I lowered my voice. ìI want to know more about them, Mary.î
Mom and I walk to church. She's wearing a coat that looked black in the house but is purple in natural light; we get into an argument about the color. "It's red," she says. "Wine."
"Purple," I say. I tell her with it and the fake-fur hat she looks Russian. She laughs. "Is that a compliment?"
The walk is a cold one. The snow is still falling. "I betcha we don't have many in church today," Mom says, but as we get closer to it she points out the organist's car. Our organist has been in charge of music at St. Thomas since 1963. She's in her 90s now. She could have killed herself on these icy roads but there's no way to stop her. Who are we to stop her? Why should we? Coming here every week could be what's keeping her alive. I used to cringe when she'd play wrong notes (twenty years ago, when I was in grade school) and think that all those old songs she'd play were ridiculously out of date, but now I treasure seeing her and hearing songs I'll never hear anywhere else.
Mom points out the only other footprints in the snow coming from our direction. "Such small prints." They can only belong to Mrs. C., my kindergarten teacher and the one who does the readings and leads the songs. So we'll have music today even if no one else shows up.
For a while it seems like no one else will. When we walk into church we spot the organist (who plays a piano in the front now instead of climbing the steep steps to the choir loft) and Mrs. C. and an usher. The usher is in the pew furthest back. It's a smallish church but it's cavernous when it's so empty. We sit near the front and debate whether Mom should say the rosary aloud or not. She comes early to lead it every Sunday, but that's when there are people to say it with her. She read somewhere about the Jewish idea of a "minion," that you need at least ten men in attendance in order to do collective prayers, and now she likes to hold our church to that standard. "We don't have a minion today," she says.
I'm thinking of Vietnamese Mass, which also has a rosary recitation preceding it. The old women who dress in white lead the prayers in a chant whose tones fall strange on my ears. Still, they and Mom are in the same tribe, really. She proves it by starting up the Apostle's Creed while the organist and Mrs. C. practice their songs and I may be the only one who is listening.
"...from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead." She pokes me, so I take up the rest of the prayer out loud while she says it softer: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and live everlasting. Amen."
Then it's almost a comedy routine as she does the first half of the Our Fathers and Hail Marys while I do the second. We should be wearing signs; her sign would say "Leader" and mine would say "Congregation." But by the second decade, Mrs. C. has joined in on the "Congregation" bits, and the people (mostly Vietnamese) start filing in.
When the rosary is completed Mom jumps from her pew. I hear her go to the back of the church and coax, "Please, sit up closer, it looks so empty in here." Soon she has herded the entire congregation into the first few rows--no small feat in South St. Louis, where the same families have sat in the same pews for generations.
She's amazing.
This is from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the scene near the end in the courtroom, where the King of Hearts is interrogating the Mad Hatter in front of a jury-box filled with various creatures. I quote it today as an example of sublime comic timing.
The miserable Hatter dropped the teacup and bread-and-butter, and went down on one knee. "I'm a poor man, your majesty," he began.
"You're a very poor speaker," said the King.
Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it.)
"I'm so glad I've seen that done," thought Alice. "I've so often read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, 'There was some attempt at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court,' and I never understood what it meant till now."
"If that is all you know about it, you may stand down," continued the King.
"I can't go no lower," said the Hatter: "I'm on the floor, as it is."
"Then you may sit down," the King replied.
Here the other guinea-pig cheered, and was suppressed.
The complete story I wrote on being in the cloister has made it online. Go to thunderstruck.org and look for the pink on the right hand side of the page. A sample:
Johnny Rabbitt's office at radio station WRTH is filled with bunny-related objects. Actually, the studio itself features a giant stuffed Bugs Bunny, a rabbit in a vest and top hat, toy rabbits in toy cars, plastic carrots, and the like. His office is almost subdued in comparison, with more emphasis on his books on local trivia and mementos of his decades-long radio career, but still rabbits abound. There is a soft cuddly example of the taxidermist's art perched atop a file cabinet.
I have stopped by the station to pick up my paycheck and have found Rabbitt's office open. I decide to sneak in and surf the web on his computer--Hotmail has been threatening dire consequences if I don't dump a couple hundred K's worth of messages from my inbox. Surely Rabbitt isn't around on a weekend, I think. All the offices were open; the cleaning crew is at work. But as I confront the agony of deleting precious email, a thick-spectacled shadow looms in the doorway.
"Angela! Hey, listen, fate may have brought you here. Are you a good writer?"
"I'm a great writer, Johnny."
"Oh good, oh good. Would you like to help me write something?"
"Sure! What about?"
"The Pink Sisters."
My heart honestly leaps at the thought. I know very little about the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters except that they wear eye-catching pink habits--not subtle pink, mind you; vivid pink like cotton candy, like the last color anyone who doesn't really know nuns would expect them to wear. I say "doesn't really know nuns" because pink would be perfect on some of the nuns of my acquaintance--the giddy young Vietnamese sisters at my church, my high school math teacher who cursed like a sailor--but I know the stereotype calls for a more sober hue. I know why these nuns are called "Pink Sisters" and I know they are cloistered. I know they prayed for good weather when the Pope visited St. Louis in January of '99, and that the temperature jumped up to 68 degrees during his visit. I know a woman who visited their convent and described to me the hospitality and the wise eyes of the Superior. I know and feel their mystique, the curiosity anyone feels about women who go in through a certain door and make a promise they will never leave. But I have never gone to their convent myself. I've always meant to but never have. I suppose I'm afraid they'll bite.
I'm going to subject you all to the story of a really bad day that started with a bout of unconsciousness and most recently included my abject apologies to a telephone solicitor.
Last night I began preparations for an unpleasant medical procedure. The medical procedure itself ain't all that bad; one is generally not awake for it, and afterward I planned to guilt Mom into buying me a Frosty. The prep work, however, involves a day on a liquid diet and then an evening of, well, I'd rather not talk about it, thank you very much. As I said, it's unpleasant.
More unpleasantly, I had a cold, and after an evening of non-fun I curled up in my covers with a horrible hacking cough. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that scheduling a medical procedure while one has a horrible hacking cough is kind of stupid, especially when part of the procedure involves having a camera stuck down one's throat. ("I'm not getting a very clear picture, Doctor. There seem to be seismic-style vibrations in the chest cavity." "RUN FOR COVER!")
After a few hours of sleep a fit of coughing woke me. I thought, "Must be morning." I checked the clock; it was 3 AM. I groaned and gathered up the blankets again, but I couldn't get warm or back to sleep. At around 4:30 I had the "We love you Conrad" song from "Bye Bye Birdie" stuck in my head:
"We love you Conrad,
Oh yes we do!
We love you Conrad,
And we'll be true.
When you're not with us,
We're blue!
Oh, Conrad, we love you!"
It cycled over and over and over. Meanwhile I was starting to shiver from the cold even though I had on two blankets. So I thought, "I'll run a hot bath." I got up, grabbed my glasses (after a couple of unsuccessful attempts; I was shaking so bad I couldn't get a grip on them), got to the bathroom, turned on the water, thought, "A bad thing is about to happen," sat down on the floor, and lost consciousness.
Now, I've fainted a few times in my life, which is one of the reasons I had the presence of mind to get down to the floor of my own volition before gravity did the job for me. But this fainting spell was really weird. For one thing, it happened terrifically slowly. My consciousness was treading water a good long time before it finally went under, so I got to be aware of all my systems shutting down. Fainting isn't like falling asleep and dreaming, because when you dream, or at least when I dream, it's as if you get to exit your immediate environment and go hang out in an alternate reality for a few hours. This, before my consciousness winked out completely, was like getting trapped in a small dark space. Very small, very trapped. I hope nothing like this every happens to me again.
I don't know how long I was out. I came back very, very slowly, just the way I left. There was this noise, only I couldn't even assign a word like "noise" to it. There was a feeling and there were shapes and colors, but again, all these were without identity. And then the word "water" filtered through, and "crick in my neck" and "bathroom tiles." I was listening to the bathtub filling up with my head at an odd angle against the wall facing the heating vent.
I contemplated this for a time. There wasn't much else I could do. I probably drifted in and out some more before my mind was ready to produce the thought, "I am splayed on my bathroom floor and it's 4:30 in the morning and I really could use some help." It was even later that I remembered I had a voice, and that I was probably strong enough to use it. I called out "MOM!" as loud as I could, and then repeated it at intervals of every few moments like a hungry baby bird: "MOM!...MOM!...MOM!...MOM!"
No response. Somehow I got up, and then I was going down the staircase making my distress call: "MOM!...MOM!...MOM!"
"What?"
I lay down on the carpet outside her room and explained the situation. I was able to end my fast with oatmeal and Boston brown bread curled in her recliner under two afghans and a blanket, and things were much better for the next few hours.
This brings me to the telephone solicitor or whoever the heck she was. It was now about ten in the morning and I was feeling lonely because everyone I know was at work and I wanted someone to tell my near-death experience to. (Okay, not a near-death experience. Just, as I said, something I'd rather not repeat.) The phone rang and I answered it.
"Good morning, ma'am. Is Mark there?" Lots of noise in the background like it was an office full of people making calls.
"I'm sorry, you have the wrong number."
"Is this--" and she read off my number.
"Yes, but there isn't any Mark here." I knew what was likely to come next; I've had this sort of call before, where they don't really care who is on the line as long as it's a live person.
"Then you must not have had this number long, is that right?"
"I'm sorry, but that's really not any of your business."
"Oh!" she said. "Now that wasn't very nice!" And she proceeded to scold me.
I don't have a lot of experience with strangers calling me unsolicited and then scolding me if they think I'm being rude, just as I previously didn't have much experience with passing out on my bathroom floor at 4:30 in the morning. I wanted to explain this to her, but instead I just said "I'm very sorry, I'm having a really bad morning."
"Well, I'll pray for you then." As she was hanging up I heard her start to say "Oh, man!" to a co-worker, as in, "You wouldn't BELIEVE what this woman just SAID to me!"
I RELLY HAVE FUN AT PRESCOOL AND DANCE CLASS AND HUGGING
AND LOVEINESS
DEAR ZAK
AND ERICA
I WOULD RELLY
LIKE IT IF
YOU COULD COME TO
DOMINIC'S BIRTHDAY PARTY
WHICH IS THE
DAY AFTER TOMARROW! FROM COUSIN THERESA
Another excerpt from the novel that may hit bookstores near you in, oh, let's say 2010.
He went out to the desert, they had told me. He had gone out to the desert before he had met any of them, and no one dared to ask him what he had seen there. But ever since then he kept running backónot to the same desert, but to high country, lonely places. What was there for him?
I wanted to know what made him the way he was. He had so much energy, he lavished so much attention on everyone he met, he gave and gave and gave. Where was the store of riches he was drawing from? Finally I thought, maybe itís in the desert.
I am a city creature. There have always been people around meómy large family, my wifeís large family, our children, my students. And all around me there is cultivation. The ground I am accustomed to walking bears the imprint of generations of men. As a child I roamed some wild places close to home. I have never spent any time in the true desert.
But I wanted to know.
Forty days, they told me. He hadnít brought any food along, just water. Unless there was a secret stash of provisions out there, he must have fasted. I wasnít up to doing all that, but I thought Iíd better do as much as I could. How long could I stay in the desert? A week? A day? An hour?
People do die in the wild. They can get weak from lack of food, they can be set upon by wild animals. I decided to tell Gamaliel my plan so he could check up on me if I hadnít returned in a weekís time.
I got ready. I filled seven skins with water and folded up a sleeping cloak. I bundled sticks and chose good tinder for a fire. Then I set out.
The wilderness is never far, no matter where you start. They say it took Jonah three days to cross Nineveh from one end of the city to the other, but I set out in the morning from a much smaller city, Capernaum, and was out by the afternoon. By early evening I could no longer hear merchants in the market or shepherds in the hills. By late evening I had crossed over a hill and down into a valley, so when I looked back I could see no sign of human habitation. I was alone.
I had with me no scrolls, no food, nothing to busy myself with. I gathered scrub brush to serve as a supplement to the wood I had brought. I prepared a place for the fire, but I decided it was too early to light it. I spread my cloak on the ground and sat on it.
I looked around. I was not in the kind of desert that is all sand, but in an undomesticated place where the soil was rocky and the plants were thorny and anything of softness or sweetness was foreign. I tried to fix the look of it in my mind: brown, gold, yellow, black; low bushes with needle-thin branches; faint trails marking where water would rush if there was rain. It was very quiet. I didnít hear birds or buzzing flies or the calls of any creature.
I didnít want to move much. Iíd been walking all day. I took a generous sip of the water and dabbed some more of it onto my skin. With nothing else to do, I let my eyes roam again over the landscape.
Slow prickles of doubt crept up my back. ìI donít know what Iím doing here,î I said aloud.
Empty air all around. No response.
At least I could have asked Jesus what he had done out here. How was I to fill my time? Had he sat chanting, did he hunt for food, did he talk to himself? Did anyone talk to him?
What if heíd done nothing at all? Could he have possibly just sat out here in absolute silence and stillness? There were times, especially when around screaming children, I had wished for nothing other than peace. Here for the first time I knew what it was like to have no disruptions. There was nothing to do, nothing to hear, not even anything very interesting to look at. My eyes were tired of rocks and angular weeds. I shut them.
Did I say there was nothing to listen to? There was nothing but noise; it was just all internal. A constant of babble of voices sang in my head: ìWhy are you doing this to yourself when you have a warm bed and a good wife and a loving family? What are you doing out by yourself with a cloak to keep you company waiting for something you know nothing about and which may not even exist? Why are you doing this with your time?î
I argued with the voices, carrying on elaborate conversations with myself, debates that could not be won. By the time it finally seemed late enough and cold enough to justify lighting the fire, I was exhausted without understanding why.
My sleep was not restful. I wandered endless dream roads.
The morning sky was clear. Birds woke me at dawn, but shortly afterward the quiet descended again. I washed my face with water and drank without rationing; I had nearly convinced myself to walk back to Capernaum that day. First, though, Iíd spend a little more time in the quiet.
My chattering thoughts rushed in when I stationed myself upright on the cloak and shut my eyes. How little control I had over them! They made me feel desperately tired. They were swarming flies and I was wearing out my arms swatting at them. I was beginning to understand the virtue of jobs undertaken for no other reason than to have something to do. Anything was better than to spend all day listening to this.
Strange, though. I knew the voices would come, I knew they would remind me that I was being a fool. I remembered how fruitless it had been to argue with myself, so this time instead I just listened. I made every effort not to get upset at what they said, no matter how insulting or provoking. I did anywayóI got upset that I carried around with me all these untamable provocations. But when I felt my hackles rise, I forced myself to smile and just listen some more.
That is how I spent a large part of the morning. I listened, went out of my mind with the distractions, realized I was going out of my mind, calmed down, got carried away again. I would often be wrapped up in my self-insults long minutes before I realized what I was doing and escaped them. Or I would get pulled into worries about home, wife and family; or I would start wondering what Jesus and Peter and the rest were doing; thinking about Jesus would lead me into memories of my students, and Iíd replay favorite images of classes, favorite pupils; then Iíd berate myself about scrolls I couldnít save, fights I picked with lazy workers. All this would go on inside before I was even aware. Then Iíd say out loud, ìNo!î and pull back to just listening, not allowing myself to get pulled along.
So it went, one cycle after another. When the sun was highest I walked around a little, slinging the waterskinís contents into my dry throat every few steps. I sang a psalm. It felt good to hear real noise, something from outside my mindís ears. But my voice also sounded shrill and alien bouncing off the rocks of that place. When I stopped singing, the wasteland seemed deader than before.
I was very hungry. When I sat back down I was annoyed to discover unstoppable images and tastes haunted me nowóripe figs, fish fresh out of the pan, near-endless supplies of wine at a wedding feast. ìYou can return to these whenever you want. You can just get up and leave,î my voices coaxed. I discovered I was gritting my teeth so hard my jaw was getting sore.
The sun crawled down. Eventually I gathered more brush, lit the fire, kept watch over the flames with waterskin in hand. I was so tired of this, but I was stubborn too. I had survived one full day out here; Jesus had done forty. It seemed pointless now, but what would happen with a little patience?
I didnít rest well that night either. I kept dreaming of rare delicacies out of reach.
The next day it rained. That offered my existence a little variety. It also made my cloak uncomfortable and smelly before the next nightís sleep.
God knows how the rainy day went for me. I shall not mention it again.
I awoke the next day in a foul temper. I tore apart one empty waterskin out of boredom and for the sheer thrill of destruction, then stomped on it howling like one possessed. Is every man a dayís walk and three meatless days from madness? I wasnít madóI wore myself out with the stomping and felt much calmer as I lay on the ground waiting for my breath to come back.
The sound of the air getting pulled in and rushing back out of my body slowly became my sole focus of interest. Even after I was breathing normally I continued to lay there enjoying the simple rhythm. What a marvel it is, I thought, that breath is both unseen and essential. Water is like that, too, sustaining without color or taste. Air and water were more important than anything I could ever own, yet there was nothing that called attention to them. They even slipped away from being grasped if I tried to snatch them in hand. Only when I was free from all distractions could I even notice their existence, yet my existence depended on them!
I wondered if anything else was like thatóso hugely necessary that my attention would have to be concentrated fully for me to even perceive it. I shut my eyes.
It felt like an explosion. It felt like an earthquake, except I, not the ground beneath me, was being split in two. Something had been waiting for me to guess at its presence, and now that it was showing itself to me, it was too immenseómy mind could not contain the thought of it. There was nothing else in the world of any importanceóno boredom, no hunger, no whining doubts. There was only this, unutterably, incomprehensibly, supremely itself. And it had been with me all this time.
Maybe Jesus could stay out in the desert with it for forty days, but I could not. The next morning my sandals were pointed toward Capernaum.
[I've decided to do a series of sorts on objects in my possession. I almost never throw anything away which carries some significance to me, but as long as no one else knows the significances it all looks like junk. Now you'll know it's all treasure. You will.]
Item: pinky ring, small circular green stone, a silver heart charm hanging from one side. Tiny metallic stars, small as confetti, attached to the loop that attaches the heart.
For my first job I worked at Wendy's, manning the salad bar, where someone came up every day and asked, "Excuse me, do you have any bacon bits?" After about the fifteenth time this question arose, it grew difficult to keep from answering through gritted teeth: "No. I do not have any bacon bits. Do I look like I have any bacon bits? Examine this salad bar carefully. Everything that can possibly had at the salad bar is clearly on display, and available for the taking, within the confines of the salad bar itself. Contrary to what you seem to be supposing, there is not top secret Bacon Bits Repository in the back to which I have denied you access out of sheer spite."
That's one thing I remember--endless streams of people coming up to my salad bar for the express purpose of asking "Excuse me. Do you have any bacon bits?" and then walking away disconsolately when the answer was no.
I also remember the piped-in music. Piped-in music is designed to calm and soothe patrons who only have to listen to it for however long they dawdle in a fast food establishment. It is not so calming and soothing to be subjected to it for seven hour stretches. There were three or four songs that I liked. When the place was empty and I was sweeping and Enya's "Orinoco Flow" or Simply Red's "Stars" came on, I'd retreat to a hidden corner and sway a little. I would call it an escape but really I spent most of my working existence daydreaming. One's mind tends to wander when one is called to do little more than clean remnants of hamburgers from tables or refill the lettuce or take the trash out to the fenced-in dumpster.
That's why I don't remember much about working there--I wasn't giving the experience a high level of concentration. I remember psyching myself for a day of toil by listening to The Nylons' Four on the Floor before I left. I remember chats with another smart misfit who worked in the back and listened to death metal at ear-piercing volumes on his headphones. But I don't remember, thankfully, hours upon hours of repetitive tasks.
Two things of value I took from that experience. One, I discovered that I cannot shirk my duties. Occasionally I gave in to the temptation of leaving some small thing undone at the end of my shift, and inevitably when I did so it caught up with me somehow. The other was the ring I found in the back of the restaurant, the part that is all windows, like a greenhouse. I claimed it like a soldier claims spoils. I couldn't justify being there all the time and not having some material reward.
Somehow I decided that besides the heart charm, the ring needed stars. I had stars of just the right size, all with little holes stamped in their middles, so I had a dexterous friend string them on for me.
And now the ring is in my jewelry drawer, never worn. I never wear jewelry.
The shape of the face is not quite right. That's the one difference. The profile is spookily similar, the chin is respectable (and the chin is very important), but if you were to compare a frontal view of Danno's face to Bono's, you'd be able to tell which was which. Seeing them in profile would be quite another story. It helps, too, that Danno is shortish, has blue eyes, and has made certain alterations to his hair.
Danno is the frontman of Elevation (or Elevation USA, to distinguish them from a Canadian group), the U2 tribute band playing Cleveland's Hard Rock CafÈ February 7th and 8th. His resemblance to Bono "is probably one of the greatest promotional tools that we have," he says between sets at a recent gig in St. Louis. To spread the word about Elevation, all the band has to do is "plop me in a well-populated situation."
Full article at atu2.com.