Sunday was a day of embarrasments for me.

Embarrassing Moment #1
The book group is sitting around the table in our new dining room, discussing Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety. It's a story of friendship, long friendship through decades of everyday life, of trauma and illness and death. I'm espousing my theory that real friendship takes time, it perseveres: it's easy to be friends with someone you've just met; it's more difficult to maintain this friendship once you're both aware of each other's flaws. True friendship, lasting friendship, occurs when people are willing to overlook these flaws, perhaps even to embrace them.

I'm listing off the friends for which I'm grateful, a list that includes the people at the table: "Mac and Pam, Joel and Aimee, Jeremy and Jennifer, Craig and Lisa, Courtney and Andrew, Dave and Karen, Denise, Lynn."

"And Don," somebody says, realizing I've left out only one member of the assembled group.

Don's a good guy, a newish book group member, and I like him. But he's older than the rest of us, and I barely know him. I feel embarrassed for leaving him out of the list, but at the same time I don't think that he actually belongs in it, because in my mind, I'm not listing book group members — I'm listing people with whom I regularly do things.

I have a chance to save myself, though. But I make things worse. "Um, and Don," I say. I look down. And then up.

"Um, yeah," I say. I'm unconvincing.

And I feel terrible, because I like Don and value his presence at the book group, and don't want for him to feel left out, but I still don't think he fits in the grouping I've constructed in my head, and my mind is now so flustered anyhow that I've lost my point.

Embarrassing Moment #2
Book group is over. Kris is cleaning the table. I am saying good-bye to Don, trying to make amends for my earlier error by chatting with him, trying to show him I do value his presence.

(Don had the best line of the day, by the way. Upon learning that Joel is slated to play Julius Caesar, he declared, "You know — I'd pay money to see somebody stab him." Laughs all around.)

When Don leaves, Mac and Pam follow me to the garage to look at a table. They decide they don't need to borrow that particular table, but head back to the house to get a smaller one.

I spend a couple of minutes by myself in the workshop, searching for some computer stuff. Because of our fine meal of salmon chowder, fresh bread, and wine, I'm a bit gassy. Well, a lot gassy. I let the gas out in a rather loud fashion.

A few moments later, I hear a choking sound.

The choking continues, so I go to the door of the workshop to listen. It sounds like a squirrel with a hairball.

Suddenly, I'm startled to see Pam nearby, wandering through the rosebeds. "It's the cat," she says, pointing at Mortimer. Mortimer is sort of staggering, gagging on a hairball of prodigious proportions. "I think he has a hairball."

"At first I thought you were farting," she adds.

Right. "I thought it was a squirrel with a hairball," I say.

"I don't think squirrels get hairballs," says Pam. I don't tell her she's right, that it was me farting. (Although now I'm admitting it in the most public of forums.)

Embarrassing Moment #3
The four of us go to see Garden State.

As we're in line for tickets, a man comes and stands between the box office and the theater doors, begging for change. "Can you spare some change? I'm HIV positive and I'm very hungry," he says. I think he's very clever, and resourceful, begging in a location where people are sure to have change.

After a couple of minutes, an attractive woman — dark eyes, dark hair, smooth oval face — strides up to the man and gives him $20. He seems a little taken aback at first, and continues to beg. Then he looks down at the twenty dollar bill again before leaving as quickly as he had arrived.

I like the movie. Individual elements of the film are fantastic, Kris and I agree later, but somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts. (The soundtrack is particularly good. It makes use of one of my favorite songs, a song with which I identified during my junior and senior years of high school: Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York". There are several other musical gems in the film, though.)

After the film, the beautiful Samaritan is waiting in the lobby nearby. Briefly, Kris says to her, "I saw what you did before, with the twenty dollars. That was very kind."

Mac and Pam and Kris and I walk to the escalator. I stand next to Mac on the ride down. For no reason in particular, I decide to pretend I'm skateboarding. I'm doing an ollie: I bend my knees, throw one arm forward and the other back for balance. Except the hand I throw back strikes Kris squarely in the breasts.

I turn and say "I'm sorry" to my wife, but she's not my wife — it's the beautiful Samaritan. Somehow, she and her date have insinuated themselves between the men and the women in our group.

The beautiful Samaritan smirks and says, "Nice to meet you, too."

I'm utterly embarrassed, and we're still only near the top of the escalator. The twenty seconds to ground level seem like twenty minutes.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Car Itch   Lately I've had the itch to buy a new car.

2003 — Books and Bikes   In which I choose a book. In which I now have a commuter bike!