It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [29]
All right, I told myself. Brace for it. Accept it. She’s going to hit your car, she’s going to scratch the paint with her stupid basket, and then the rest of Eugene can hate you, too. But when she got within ten feet of my car, another miracle blast of wind came up on the other side and flopped the yellow poncho right back to where it was supposed to be. The Big Banana and I locked eyes, our destinies so close to being intertwined.
“You’re going the wrong way,” I shouted to her again, and pointed to the sidewalk. “You need to be over there.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, she looked at me, said simply, “You shouldn’t hate old people,” then put it in reverse, and, although it took her an additional light to make it back up onto the sidewalk, I finally got to turn left.
So things were starting to look up, I thought. There’s a lot of fun to be had here. It wasn’t as if I hated Eugene; quite the contrary. I really loved it. The landscape was unparalleled, the general citizenry was incredibly nice, people you’ve never seen before always greeted you with a smile or hello when passing on the street, and I had an adventure near every single time I left the house. In Eugene, there was excitement, beauty, and friendly people. You really couldn’t ask for anything more of a town. Maybe things aren’t so bad, I realized; it might just take me awhile to find my spot here, that’s all. I was sure that I could make my peace with Eugene and that Eugene could make its peace with me. I just needed to be on the lookout for breast-feeding flash mobs and bring nothing but napkins to potlucks. I was positive, after all, that once I had seen a hundred boobs at a barbecue, the horror would eventually erode, like the cliffs of Dover. I realized that everything was going to be all right.
Until I was at Trader Joe’s one day, where I noticed there was a table set up near the coffee station that was giving out free samples of something in little paper cups. But the process of sampling wasn’t working out as well as it could have, mainly because as soon as the sample girl put a cup out, a bearded old-man hippie, who had strategically stationed himself between the dairy section and the coffee counter, would take a step, swipe the sample, and toss it back like it was a tequila shot before anyone else had a chance to get near it.
I couldn’t believe it. I stood down at and watched him as he swiped seven in a row, taking some of them directly from beneath the fingertips of other shoppers trying to get a sample. His stealth was amazing, I will admit, but it was getting out of hand. But this is a thing in parts of this enclave: Free samples are just an open invitation for someone to park themselves and feed for the afternoon. I firmly believe that Eugene was founded when one person with ill-placed intentions left a bowl of spelt crackers out in the middle of the forest with the sign FREE on it; the hippies descended upon it like ants and then stayed, waiting around, playing drums, and popping their boobs out until the next free sample bowl was produced. I’ve seen a line of twenty-five people crowd together for the opportunity to eat one free raspberry at the farmers’ market. ONE FREE RASPBERRY. I mean, really. It’s only a free raspberry. For two bucks, you can buy a whole carton, and there’s nobody in that line.
Watching the sample swiper, I felt my anger rise quickly, and as I saw the sample girl getting ready to put