Friday, May 28, 2004 My chosen career
When I was a kid, I read anything. I'd go to the library and get a stack of books, many of them marked with decals of dogs or horses, to show the subject matter. As I got older and read faster, I'd run out of books long before they were due back, so I'd dip into my mother's selections. She went for the books with the red skull decals.
Generally, a rose garden was involved, and gentility. People were killed in interesting ways with a variety of objects: jeweled daggers, pits of hot mud.
That kind of thing leaves an impression in childhood.
Later, I found out (from other mystery novels) that mostly, real private investigators have infinitely boring jobs; it's all insurance fraud stuff and divorce cases, so I scrapped any dreams of becoming a girl sleuth.
Then today I was talking with my one friend who's a bicycle messenger. He keeps encountering this one guy, who dresses in distinct and inappropriate manner. My friend recently shared an elevator with this man(I will call him WrongShirt)as WrongShirt regaled (this is a new character. Alias:)Hair-Do with patter about how he never went outside because he had a system of tunnels beneath the city, and how he had a special rat named Ben. And yes, the reference may have been cooler before the re-make, but it was more diverting than what one normally hears between floors, so my friend laughed and said, "You guys are the most interesting people I've met in an elevator all day."
WrongShirt sneered at my friend! He said, "Well! You must have a pretty boring life, in that case." My friend went and delivered the package, because he'd arrived at his floor, so he didn't have time to point out that 1)he'd specified that the gentleman were only the most intereting he'd met in an elevator 2)WrongShirt was dressed inappropriately.
My friend saw WrongShirt again today, standing outside the same building, smoking a cigarette, looking angry. "How's 'Ben'?" my friend asked. WrongShirt looked at him and sputtered, and my friend pedaled away.
Now that we know that he's forced outside to smoke several times a day, it wouldn't be so hard to seek out WrongShirt, and strike up a conversation. Why is he so angry? Why is he wearing the Wrong Shirt?
I could be personal private detective, like a personal shopper. People could hire me to question puzzling, anti-social people they have to deal with, in hopes of better understanding them. (And to satisfy morbid curiosity!)
I'd go on down there tomorrow, but I get the feeling that if I'm going to really speak WrongShirt's language, I have to study up on Dr. Who trivia. posted by Frenz | 5/28/2004 01:09:00 AM
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