ABOUT FACE
Made a brief stop in the bathroom stall of a local Mexican restaurant some time back only to find I was being watched. (Recall the once-blogged-of fork find? Yep, the very one!) Couldn’t take my eyes from the face ingrained in the faux wood laminate paneling on the door.
Yes, my dad’s fairly fixated on that particular restaurant at the moment. It began just after the overhaul to his diet in the quest for optimal health last February. By mid-March, he raved regularly over their tortilla soup, a dish he’d once found “too”. Too spicy! St. Patrick’s Day rolled around along with an invitation to accompany him to dinner for the holiday’s traditional fare. Tortilla soup? He frequents their establishment a little more than frequently these days. A recent dinner there, found the entire staff stopping by our table off and on throughout the meal, my dad greeting each by name, and they in return. Love that! It speaks to the sense of community I wish to reside in now and always. Inside jokes and bits of prior conversation ensued and it was more than good to get a glimpse of the spell he casts when foregoing his hermit-like ways.
• One greets him with “welcome home!” each and every.
• Another brings “the usual” without asking.
• With Thanksgiving and Christmas, came sincere invites to join yet another’s family for the holidays.
And, at last, he understands the joy of spicy food. A cohort! (Insert “ode” here.) Months and months ago, he’d be found inevitably hacking away at some point during the meal, the heat found in the broth having built to a point where it’d catch him up. Now he constantly says, “It’s just not as hot as it once was, it needs more heat,” to which I continually respond with something to the affect of, “It’s one of two things: the cooks’ve learned already, having long since tired of your hacksome displays and now forego the addition of any and all heated elements. Or, you’ve acclimated. Congrats!” In a semi-related item, I want THIS! I swear, that little deviled monkey winked at me as I walked by at the grocery store a few days back.
Other found faces? Try this one. A little “yikes,” right? That poster creepeth me more than a little out. Bean once displayed it on her closet door in order to take advantage of this very fact. Le yelp! Adore the beloved Lecter, a perfect man, he is, more or less- wry and witty, cultured and culinary, perceptive and analytical, calm and collected, thorough and impassioned, those drawings- extraordinaire!- and an obsessive fixation for one woman like no other. Problem: serial killer? No. Fictional. That’s one staring contest (the only), I’ll not be winning any time soon.
Lame scare of the week, a face lurking at the bottom of the coffee cup. My cup. My face! Jumped even. Jiminy. Suppose you’d jump, too, though, were you to find my face at the bottom of your coffee cup, yes?
Gifts bestowed from Bean and Shane’s recent travels included this here looking glass. Ha. Looking … glass …
Through all of October and much of November, the following face could be viewed just across the way. Existing purely of a tassled curtain and the blinds which twisted themselves in such an odd way as to produce, well, that, at some point, curiosity found me enquiring of others, did they see what I saw? Affirmation came quickly in Shane’s response, “You mean that insane scary-ass death skull cackling in the window?”
Lastly, was entirely egg faced a while back now. Huevos rancheroed! Sitting at a 3-way stop on a 2-lane road, I pulled up to the line as the car to my right drove straight on through. My turn! Began to accelerate and instead tromped on the brakes as the next car on the right appeared to piggy-back on the tail of the first guy, but was instead turning left. Into me! Nearly. I squinted my death ray vision in his general direction and the choice word of “Assssho-“ began its escape from my mouth in finding my turn so rudely skipped when I suddenly realized, hey, I know that guy. Johnny! The way-friendly, super awesome dude who sells me far too many movie tickets. We often talk it up, exchanging opinions and recommendations. I then see that there’s an entirely separate turning lane making his assumed piggy-back really just a slow-to-start perfectly rightful turn on his part leaving me the one in the wrong. Bad enough it was, wronging someone, but then to actually know the person that I was delivering such a term of disaffection to on top of it. Headed to the movies the very next day in need of apologizing pronto. He wasn’t there. In fact, for one seen so regularly, over three months passed before another encounter occurred. Upon the occurrence, noticed Johnny’s so-nice longish hair was all buzzed off. When commented on, he mentioned that he makes a habit of growing it out and chopping it off for charity. Meanie, miney, me!
Lesson learned: see beyond all the hunks-a-metal on wheels out there on the road to the people inside, the faces, remembering there’s always a heart n’ soul in there, no matter the offense given, whether it be merely perceived or the real deal.