Do you ever wonder if it’s a good thing when someone remarks that you haven’t changed at all?
I finally met up with Winnie. Friend from way back. She bakes once in a while now and just organised a sale before the Chinese New Year period and we were getting together so She could pass me the cookies I ordered before she had to fly off to her holiday.
Well she sure did look the same smallish girl with the same unpretentiously warm and welcoming smile. Nice girl, currently married. So no designs. Whatsoever.
It’d been years and though we didn’t get the time to really catch up, this meeting felt weirdly undistant, like when we were back on our stints at Bugis Junction those many years ago.
She used to work at the Pepperlunch Express stall in foodcourt on the third floor.
「いらっしゃいませ！」
The staff would greet when serving a new customer, a practice typical to any Japanese establishment.
I remember when she left her position and for awhile came to work at the retail store I was at, and one afternoon, while new to the job, standing outside the outlet, blurted out the same stock greeting from her previous workplace.
「いらっしゃいませ！」
That slip alone caused us to roar in crazy laughter for minutes on end.
Anyway, I wonder if you’ve watched the movie Hope Floats. You know the one starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr.
There’s a scene in the movie where Birdee Pruitt played by Bullock is back, taking refuge in her hometown, freshly emotional from a divorce or separation or something of the sort, but now with her preteen daughter, Opal who has no idea that both have been deserted by her father.
So Birdee finally needs to find a job to support the both of them and at the job agency run by an old friend she hardly recognizes at first glance, is told something along the lines of
“You haven’t changed one bit.”
That most people get better over the years but she has managed to remain that same figure of ‘homecoming queen’ from years long past. Almost to the point where her inability to adapt to life in the real world is implied.
In that way, I often do wonder if it’s a good thing when I get that observation coming my way. Maybe in a good way, we retain our values. Not letting the harshness of the world change how we view it too much. I don’t know.
As I walked around to greet Larry, her husband, who decided to remain in the car, I wondered what girls really looked for in a man, to choose them to spend the rest of their lives with.
The momentary unglamorousness that greeted my eyes, of a guy in the driver’s seat, fumbling with little success in trying to keep his hands condiment-free from a leaky McDonald’s burger. I couldn’t even bring myself to shake his hand, meeting him for the first time.
But maybe it was just the moment. Maybe he was more of a knight in armor I just couldn’t perceive in that perhaps untimely encounter.
In any case, if he’s the provider she has chosen, one day, I think I’ll have to be that man. I mean, she seems happy. And if the girl I end up with ever ends up looking half that happy being with me, it could only be a good thing. Although that, I wouldn’t be as confident to guaranteed if my hands wind up as similarly smeared with ketchup.
Yup. So learnings in progress.
Hang out sessions with friend’s husband definitely to be scheduled.
pianofishable 