The Shopping List

"I owe you an apology," she said. "I thought the reason you were having trouble finding the right business partner was that you were making bad choices and sabotaging yourself."

I still can't believe that she got out of the starting blocks with that remark. Bad choices? Sabotaging myself? Well, it just goes to show that not even the quality elite, like Ms. Wonder, is perfect.

"I didn't realize the full extent of what you're up against. I knew Durham women were high strung, but I had no idea they were such vicious little sharks."

"Well," I said, "I'm not sure that can be said about all of them."

"Okay, just the ones you seem to know. Don't get me wrong," she said, "I've bailed out of the middle of a business deal before. I once walked out on a hunting party in South Texas because my client sat with a tub of popcorn between his legs and, when not feeding his face, pointed and laughed at the members of the hunting party every time they missed a quail. But that's another story. Did they have everything?"

If the above spot of dialogue seems confusing to you then you can imagine how my mind ached as I tried to get around it. I felt that the honest woman had forgotten some of her lines. But then suddenly, in that strange way it sometimes happens, I remembered something that allowed me to catch up with her.

On the previous day this Ms Wonder had asked me to pick up some items at the Scrap Exchange, in the Golden Belt district, which she assured me would come in handy--the items, not the Golden Belt, although I'm sure it too comes in handy. 

The couple working the service desk that day put me strongly in mind of people who raise Cocker Spaniels. Not sure why. I handed them my shopping list and they searched for me, digging through boxes and cartons of the discarded treasure stacked along the walls. They seemed pleased to have a customer who had specific needs and wasn't just browsing for something wacky.

"They had everything," I told her, "but what I'd like to know is what I'm supposed to do with this junk."

"First," she said, "you write a suggestion for a new meditation class on a puzzle, break it up, and stuff the pieces into an envelope. When your prospective partners open them, they wonder if they've gotten a message from a psycho but then they see your name on the outside so they put the puzzle together. Then they see the suggestion as coming from a very creative guy."

"I don't know, Poopsie, it all sounds very high school to me."

"That's why it works. It makes a woman feel that she's back in high school receiving a valentine from a secret admirer. Of course, you probably never got valentines from secret admirers so you can't appreciate what I'm saying."

"Hey!"

"Just kidding," she said. "Oh, I thought of another good idea."

"I can't wait," I said.

"You'll love this one. Remember that online service that does business cards?"

"I don't use business cards," I said.

"You'll use these business cards. Order a box with nothing but your name on them in Art Deco type. Blue font on cream card-stock. Then when you hand out your cards, your prospective business partner will say, 'But your contact information isn't on here.' Then you write your number on the card. That tells her that you don't do business with just anyone. Only certain people meet your standards and she's one of them."

"A lot of people prefer to tweet," I said.

"Too chatty," she said, "Stay low-tech and it will set you apart."

"Ms. Wonder," I said resorting to the formal address, "No offense, but I don't know where you're coming from with this. I can't picture people in Houston, Texas handing out understated cream business cards."

"You're right about that," she said. "Most people in Houston introduce themselves by honking the horns of their pickup trucks. But I've spent a lot of time in Charleston, South Carolina, and let me tell you they have some slick..." 

I can't repeat the rest of her statement and as far as I was concerned, it was pure drivel. It had all gotten right by me. I began to wonder if that marvelous brain of hers had gone kaput. I thought it best to move on to another subject.

"So what am I supposed to do with this Ouija board?" I asked.

"I haven't figured that out yet," she said, "I just thought you should get one."

Find Bill

While I could not go so far as to describe the heart as leaden, it was definitely short of chirpiness. This can be expected when friends gather at a favorite oasis to browse and sluice, enjoying rain on the roof and warmth in the hearts, and then the time comes to say a biento. You just don't want the good times to end.

                                        Copyright Bill Rasor 2012

This describes perfectly the morning when Ms Wonder and I met Jenny at William's Gourmet Kitchen in the South End. We came together to exchange notes on the status of the upcoming wedding that will irrevocably link Jenny with the affianced Bill. 

You will understand the importance placed on these wedding plans when I tell you that this is not one of those light-weight, flit and sip, summer flirtations but the real forever-after thing. They love!

You may be saying to yourself if you are one of the more observant readers, that I am overlooking the elephant in the kitchen--the absence of any Bill in the proceedings. Where is Wild Bill Hillsborough you might be asking yourself but, if you are one of the Inner Circle, you know that the missing person is spending the weekend in Emerald Isle on the Crystal Coast, just down the Atlantic Ocean a bit from Beaufort, where Ms Wonder and I dealt with the aunts last weekend.

The aunts will not figure largely in Bill's stay because it's not aunts themselves that matter so much as the courage one brings to them and this Wild B.H. takes a line through Napoleon.

It turns out that my lack of chirpiness was not due to the habit Bill has of materializing everywhere in the state of North Carolina where I am not. No, the disturbance that led to the v-shaped depressions, if disturbances do lead anywhere, was the appearance in the footlights of Princess Amy, that holdover from the Paleolithic who has the habit of making an ass of herself when she stops going to meetings and gets off her meds.

Not to worry, however, this Amy is not the menace she once was. Fierce QiGong has given me the necessary cosh for whacking her like a game of whack-a-mole every time she pops up for another go. And so I say, "Not today, Amy." Today I will be free from the limitations of yesterday.

That brunch was a good example of the principle that there is more good than bad in each moment. There was, in fact, more Wonder and Jenny present than there was absence of Bills. But he was still missed sorely! Hurry home, Bill.