I Got Your Friendly Right Here(Cigar Smoke (7-15-10)

You know, I try to be friendly. I really do. I am not quite as much of a pissy turd as I make myself out to be in this here column. (See, I added the “here” in that last sentence to show off my folksy, friendly side.)

The reason I am bringing up all this friendly stuff is that I am now taking a much needed break from my stressful retirement so I can vacation up in Oregon for a month, and it’s a state law to be friendly up here. I mean to tell you, everybody is friendly. It’s a little eerie. But I am trying my best to adapt to this foreign environment, and if it doesn’t kill me, I should be friendlier when I come back to LA.

You notice it right away. I go into a Fred Myers grocery and everything-else-ever-manufactured store and the checker is talking to someone a few people up the line from me. She knows the woman. The woman is in her 60s. The checker went to elementary school with her. Yes, I now know that their old schoolmate, Johnny Dayton, just got kicked out of the American Legion hall for something I think she called “non-wife fondling.”

The next woman gets to the checker and they start chatting. Nothing quite as chat-worthy as Johnny Dayton’s sexploits, but they do give the gossip tidbits the necessary time to fully flesh them out. I am just kind of standing there, acting like I think this friendly shit is OK, and it’s getting harder and harder to fake it.

After five full minutes of staring at my four non-moving items on the conveyor belt, I give them my LA hurry-up cough. I cough a few times. Cough. Ahem. Cough. They both glance at me. I know they want to tell me to take a Menthol Luden’s and insert it in a body opening that is not my mouth, but they just smile at me. The bitches.

Finally, the lady hands the checker a copy of the latest National Enquirer, and says, “Jeez, that Al Gore would be quite a load, wouldn’t he?” And the checker says, “Looks like a little global squirming going on.” I crack just the beginning of a smile at these remarks and they look at me again. I apologize for listening in on them with a lame hands-up sissy gesture.

I get to the checker and say, “Hi.” She says, “Can’t talk now. I have customers behind you.”

I probably shouldn’t have told you that first anecdote first, because the people are generally just friendly, and they don’t usually say mean things to us potential Luden’s users. Like I was in a restaurant and the waitress came over and said, “What’ll it be, darlin’?” And I said, “Did you call me darlin’, darlin’?” And she adjusted her apron, and said, “Why, yes, darlin’, I did call you darlin’, darlin’” (I was going to say, “But you never even called me by my name” but I knew she wouldn’t get the reference. Neither will you. So that’s why I didn’t say it.)

Everybody is friendly. They take time with you. They appear to maybe even like you. They have faking sincerity down to a science. The gas station attendant fills up my tank and tells me about the salmon run. The bookstore owner walks me to the book section I need and personally wipes the dust off the row of books I will look at. The frame-store owner sells me the cheaper picture frame because he thinks it will work better for me.

And a couple of days ago I had a guy come out to give me a bid for a fence I’m building for my dog, Archie the Airedale. And this guy was so nice I thought he had the wrong house. He was nicer than Pat Boone, baby. He called me “sir” so many times I thought I had been promoted to corporal. And then the next day, I go out on the dock to just walk around and I notice a guy standing there with a rod and reel and I look at him like I sort of know him, but I’m puzzled and he finally says, “Yeah, it’s me, the fence guy! Wanna go fishing?”

“It’s me, the fence guy. Wanna go fishing?”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would have heard that in LA. It’s just too damn friendly for city slicker talk. But I do have mixed emotions on all this friendly stuff. I know they will eventually find out I’m not really all that friendly and then I will be rejected and continue on with my lonely, unfulfilled, tragic walk-through life.

So I tentatively said something to the fence guy about his choosing me to go fishing with. I said, “Do you really want to go fishing with me?” And he kind of looked at me like that was a bit too touchy-feely, and said, “Yeah, sure, you look like a good guy.” And I smiled my manly hug-smile and he continued. “And my buddies are all working today. And, by the way, you think, maybe you could buy the bait?”