Consider the people who come and go through your life who you don't have much of a choice over, whose names, perhaps, you wouldn't know if it weren't labeled crookedly on their name tag, or if you didn't see their name on your receipt. The people you rely on to help hunt-and-gather from the grocery store, or arm you with coffee supplies for 30 at the coffee shop, or make you a bagel en-route to work when you have no groceries or desire to make yourself breakfast. I can reach 99% of the people I used to be classmates with either by the Facespaces or email or calling, or asking about them, perhaps sneakily, through a mutual friend or relative. But it's the people you barely know personally whose disappearance from your life leaves you feeling sad, uneasy, and kinda mad that no one consulted you on the change.
Two years ago, my younger Self had an imaginary boyfriend that worked at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf near my work and school. Imaginary, of course here meaning, that he hadn't actually agreed to the idea himself, although I would like to think that he might have if I had done more than nervously laugh out my order. From his own crookedly-adhered name tag, I learned his name was Jeff. And from seeing him one day exit the Jeep to enter his place of employment, I learned that he indeed drove a Jeep. I would see that Jeep, and subsequently Jeff about 1-2-3 times per week. While I was certainly pleasant and polite, I usually said little more than "medium Earl Grey Tea latte, and can you put that on ice, thank you very much." I was working up to, "what's your favorite drink?" or "do you like plants and flowers?" when all of the sudden the Jeep was not there one morning. Nor was Jeff. Ok, it's ok, I'm sure he'll be back. I imagined he had taken the day off to do something crazy, like go up to L.A. with his visiting brother who was a traveling musician and they were going to do something much cooler than Coffee Bean & Tea Leafing. I shook my head, thinking, well even Jeff desires a day off. We'll be here, we'll be just fine without you, but hurry back from L.A. and for god's sake, be safe while you're there. So, at first it was the first day, then it was the second day, and then a week, and then about a month, and then, well, I just stopped going to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. I couldn't imagine it without Jeff. I kept wondering, where did he go?? Perhaps to go live out his dreams of being a shepherd in some remote country like Angola and eventually start an organic textiles company? Or maybe he was fired. Maybe when his brother came, he tried to give him a free drink and the manager saw and fired him. Either way, I imagine him Jeeping away from his final day at coffee bean, and throwing his apron out the top, feeeling freedom. I only wish he had let me know.
And just last week, I returned home to find my screen door removed. This screen door, mind you, had been mostly about appearances for quite some time, the illusion of course being that we had an operable screen door at all. Between water damage, time, and the empire of wood-eating termites I am convinced have a entrance to their kingdom right at our screen door's bottom, the door was failing. It neither fully closed nor stayed opened, just kind of wobbled in between the two states, taking to banging on the surface near by--the door frame or the wall by my bedroom, at the head of my bed. On a stormy night, I used to like to shake my fist at the door, so as to say, "I have half a mind to come out there and rip you off your hinges you mangy jerk, you terrible door, you." It was the desire to not do that in the middle of the night, and the reality that ripping anything off of its hinges is something you probably have to practice at and it might not be for the best to try a first attempt in the middle of the night. The bean-shaped pool does have a night light that creates this bluish glow in the courtyard of the Melrose-Place-esque apartment complex we live at, but I doubt that would be enough light to get something like that done right and well. So I always just stayed in bed, and dreamed of the day I might get to rip that thing off. One day, I was finally so incensed about the door, that I wrote a note to our landlord about it assuming it would become a new priority, and never really heard much back. It had been the most passive aggressive attempt at getting something fixed. "Our screen door appears to be not working effectively, I believe it may have water damage or perhaps termites. Maybe others are having the same problem??" Eventually, the landlord acknowledged it, and said he was going to try to figure out what to do and perhaps replace them all. However, having earlier this spring waited 2 months for our chandelier to be fully replaced in the kitchen after it came crashing down one Saturday morning, I was not assuming much would be done quickly, and that we would hear about the labor required well before. I came home the other day, and the screen door was gone. Not replaced, just gone. And while, yes, it doesn't bang any more, I couldn't help but feel like my screen door had been ripped from me unjustly and untimely. I didn't even have a chance to say good bye or perhaps rip it off myself. It is not, as it is customary with pets, already replaced by a newer cuter more versions of itself. It's like the dog died and we're just leaving the dog bed on the floor anyway. Where did the screen door go? Did they chop it into pieces and salvage some for wood? Is the landlord just going to try to re-work this same screen door in his patio-turned-workshop? It seems like an odd lead in, "Where did my screen door go?" but I need some answers.
I moved to Coronado (Island) in June of 2010, and faced a dud-of-a-summer resulting in diminished hoards of tourists, somewhat letting me down from the bustling resort community I was hoping to descend upon. Instead of elbowing through droves of children, watching their ice cream cones melt m ore rapidly than they could manage, I was casually strolling down Orange Avenue. Instead of being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, perhaps accompanied with some horns from the New Yorkers, I was cruising along 55-60 enjoying seamless entrances and exits to and from my new little town. The bridge got more familiar every day to the point that I began to look other places than directly ahead of me, and the shaking hand subsided with time. The Coronado Bridge is a 2.1 mile pre-stressed concrete/steel girder bridge. (Yeah, I looked that up.) It opened to traffic on August 3, 1969 (1 day and 15 years before I was born) to mark the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the discovery of San Diego. There is a Highway Patrol station at the base of it, on the Coronado side, as this bridge is a state road--Route 75. The gateway into Coronado is this abandoned toll booth, historically used to charge tolls until 2002, and now merely serves as great way to Get People to Slow Down. The bridge is fairly well engineered to handle traffic, as it has a barrier system that can move to create a 2-3 or 3-2 lane situation according to traffic action. The partitions are moved, on a fairly regular schedule, by a Cal-Trans vehicle. The vehicle is driven by a man and the result is that what was formerly 2 lanes is now 3 and vice versus. It happens once in the morning and once at night, and perhaps in emergencies, although I don't know if this is the type of job open to "on-call" requirements. The first time I noticed the driver of the Barrier System Mobile waving, I was dumbfounded. Once of those dumbfounded-nesses that leaves you squinting your eyes, shaking your head, and whispering to yourself, "waving." Not yet disgusted, but if there had been any grotesque element about the act, it would have definitely been "disgusted." For a while, I would just drive by, and kind of sternly stonewall him, so as to teach him a lesson that he was "driving a very important vehicles precariously between oncoming traffic and that he had better take it a little more seriously." Then eventually, I just stopped being so disconcerted about it. "Looks like he's got the waving under control today," I'd say. Or, "He has been doing this for quite some time." And then I eventually realized that he could definitely recognize repeat cars, so he perhaps literally felt like he knew the passers-by. Then I felt like I lightly smacked my own self, which was slightly dangerous, as I was still driving on a bridge. I realized, I did kind of know this man. He seemed like an Ernest. And so from then on, I waved right on back. Sometimes a respectful, "Hi Ernest," wave and other times a, "How ya doin?" wave, but I realized it never got old for me. And he must have felt the same way. So you can imagine my horror, I say, complete horror over my bridge travel last evening when you just listen to what I'm about to tell you. On the approach, I was readying myself to greet Ernest. Not too soon, not too late. But as I got closer, i realized I was not waving at Ernest at all! Ernest was a fair man, with a hat and glasses, and certainly NO MUSTACHE, and he was being replaced by a dark mustached-man, a man who did not wave back and made me embarrassed I was being friendly. I snapped my hand down quickly, then faked like I was going to the radio. I ended up just turning it off. "Where's Ernest. Where is he?" While I allow the man a sick day or two, his mustached substitute had better be temporary...If I don't see Ernest the next time I pass Cal-Trans, I'm going to call that place up, and ask where Ernest is. I may have to explain that, No, I was not sure his name was Ernest. And also maybe why I was asking. But I think I need to get the answers that I never got with Jeff. I just accepted his gaping absence from my morning tea routine. What if I had asked his manager, "Where's Jeff?" After all, I did actually know this guy's name.
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