Author Archives: wcaplan

Dec 25 2012
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Informative

We’re still here


MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAIf I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a million times over the last week. We’re still here. Honestly, who really thought that we wouldn’t be? I have nothing against the Mayans but it seems to me that it would be rather difficult to predict the end of the world, to the day, from 750 years out. I mean I’m sitting here looking at about 7 feet of snow and temps verging on the “impossible to step outside and live” and no one told me that was going to happen. But given my penchant for all things shallow I suppose it’s not surprising that I don’t really place much stock in ancient predictions, spiritual prophecies or anything that smacks of the mysterious because it’s a bit of a crapshoot how that stuff is going to play out. Let’s face it, what it comes down to is if it happens then it’s some kind of inexplicable miracle which we may or may not be around to witness and if it doesn’t it’s not a big deal because nobody actually expected it to anyway. So I’m ambivalent at best, and skeptical enough to refrain from placing an order to Costco for two year’s worth of dried delicacies on which to feast while waiting out the apocalypse in a bunker in my basement where I normally only go to do my laundry.

Now you know I am a woman of my convictions but as of late I’m starting to think there may be a fly in this ointment, a bump in the road, the proverbial achilles in my heel, all of which have caused me to doubt my heretofore tightly held convictions about the world and the mysteries within. What, you ask, has led me to this rather gut-wrenching change of heart? Well let me tell you.

You may remember my mentioning that I have a rather uncanny resemblance to Ms. Streisand, although truth be told I’m taking the word of others on this one as I don’t really see it myself. Nonetheless, I do feel somewhat obligated to pay my respects by attending her latest creative endeavors even when the reviews suggest I would be better off waiting a week or two for the release of the DVD. And so it was that I found myself sitting in a rather sparsely populated movie theatre watching Babs and her on-screen son travel across the country in something smaller than two closely related people should ever cohabitate, and that’s when it happened.

There are a few things I haven’t told you about myself in my previous posts not because I didn’t want you to know them or because they are too personal, but simply because they never really came up. The first is that on my desk at work I have an M & M’s machine that I religiously fill with, what else, M & M’s. And while there are now more kinds of this classic munch than you can count on one hand, I’ve remained loyal to the company roots by selecting the chocolate covered peanut variety as my candy of choice. The second is that every once in awhile you might find me taking a chance or two with a 20 at the slots. Neither of these in and of themselves is notable unless of course you happen to see them being played out on the big screen by someone who is said to look a lot like you.

And that’s exactly what happened at the movie. Without giving too much away I think it is safe to tell you that the opening scene has Babs lying in bed crunching on none other than peanut M & M’s and that they play a rather significant part in the plotline of this film which eventually finds the Mom/Son duo spending the night in Las Vegas. Before you know it Babs is feeding a 20 (maybe two) into her favourite one armed bandit. Now if Babs and I had shared only one strikingly similar characteristic I probably would have given it a chuckle and thought nothing more of it. But at the moment Babs left the check-in line at the hotel and sat down at the “frogger” machine I knew something bigger was going on, that there was more than coincidence here and perhaps even the work of a force that I can never hope to understand. It is clear to me now that all of the years I have spent listening and responding to “do you know who you look like” have been leading to this very moment, and that our similarities (Babs and mine that is) transcend a mere physical resemblance to something so much more significant and meaningful.

I know, you’re thinking “what is she talking about? It’s just a movie. Babs doesn’t really eat M & M’s in bed!”  Well she might or she might not but the chances are probably a lot higher than that whole Mayan thing. And I’m guessing that one or two of you out there thought, for even just a moment, that there was an ever so small chance that today we might not still be here.

Barbra, can you hear me? I think we may have some kind of mystical connection.

Here’s wishing all my shallow and “not so much” friends a very Merry Christmas.

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Dec 16 2012
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Sad

Again!

 

newtown-ribbon

 

 

 

 

It’s simple. There can be no shallow blog this week.

Dec 08 2012
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Informative

Conversations with my Hairdresser

Hair on floor in a hair salonI really like my hairdresser. I’ve been going to the same person now for over 15 years and I can say with confidence that I have never had a bad haircut from her. Or highlights, because I do that too. I know quite a bit about her, well if you consider the fact that she has twins and likes to travel to Mexico, “quite a bit”. And I thought she knew quite a bit about me too. Because one of the things that happens when you go to the hairdresser is that you chat a lot. After all, what else are you going to do when you find yourself sitting in a chair for two hours (yes, that’s how long it takes to get highlights in this hair) with the same person standing behind you the entire time. So you talk. About all kinds of things. You talk about your kids, and your holidays, and your Mother, and what you ate for dinner, in a pinch the economy and, because you’re Canadian, the weather. And you would think that for a shallow person this is just about as good as it gets. And it was until I realized that my hairdresser doesn’t really remember anything that we talk about. Which, since I have started thinking about this, has come to make a lot of sense to me and I’m ok with it.

Here’s the thing. I only have one hairdresser who I see approximately every seven to eight weeks. During our time together she tells me stuff and, if you recall from one of my earliest posts, my memory is really not all that bad so it’s not hard for me to remember that her kids have just started high school (I can hardly believe they got so big so fast) and that she takes a yearly vacation to an all-inclusive resort in Puerto Vallarta or some facsimile and the details here don’t matter much because from what I know about “all-inclusives” it really makes no difference where they are since all you’re going to end up talking about is how much people ate and drank while they were there. Conversely, my hairdresser, depending on the day, sees between eight and ten people which means that in any given week she has 40 or 50 souls sitting in her chair, talking to her about their kids, holidays, Mothers, husbands, Mothers-in-law and who knows what else. And if we say that on average, each of those people have their hair done once every six weeks, it means that in the interval between each appointment my hairdresser may have seen somewhere in the vicinity of 240 people. And she has no choice but to listen and pretend that she has a modicum of interest in what each one is saying beyond how many inches of hair should be trimmed and whether you’re sporting ash or strawberry blonde highlights.

Now I don’t want to be presumptuous here but I’m guessing that only a fraction of these people see my hairdresser outside of getting their hair done and since few would be included on her “friends” list, she has no real obligation to even attempt to recall the stories we relate to her from one visit to the next. I mean to do so would be almost superhuman and beyond all reasonable expectations. Come on now, who would really expect their hairdresser to juggle the massive amounts of data she receives simply because she has chosen an occupation whose residual effect is to have people talk to you incessantly about things you don’t care about?  The answer, to what you may have thought was a rhetorical question, is no one. Not one person would expect this of another human being.

So having thought about my conversations with my hairdresser for the past two weeks (I know you noticed that I didn’t post last week and that’s because I was still thinking) I am ok with the fact that when I mention my Brother’s impending nuptials (and that’s happened more than once I’m afraid) she gazes at me rather inquisitively with that “oh, you have a brother?” look in her eyes. Which has led me to two conclusions. The first is that I no longer have to think up new stories to tell my hairdresser because she doesn’t remember them anyway and a couple of really good ones in rotation will suffice. The other is that I think I should have been a hairdresser.

Happy Chanukah and remember that extra blessing as you light the first candle this evening.

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Nov 26 2012
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A little sad

Sleeping in Seattle

Seattle skylinePicture this. You’re in the shoe department of Nordstrom’s on Black Friday and, in most people’s books, it’s pretty frenetic. Not that there are shoes flying everywhere or anything like that. I mean this is *Nordstrom’s* where a live pianist replaces the drone of the mood-altering Musak and shoes range in price from “ok I can do that” to “maybe not, I’d still like to eat this year”. And everything considered you gotta know that they’ve done this before because things go like clockwork. I mean you nonchalantly pick up a shoe and before you know it there’s someone with a loud speaker summoning help on your behalf. Almost instantaneously they provide you with not only the “E.T.A.” but just about all of the information you need to become good friends with your “shoe consultant” (their term not mine) which, in my case of course, might just happen. All in all, given the circumstances, it’s not a half-bad experience and, as my Mother would say, worse things could happen to you. This however, is apparently a sentiment not shared by the woman I unfortunately came to know when paying for my purchases.

I should make something clear. The shoe consultants at Nordstrom’s all work on commission which explains the great service you get and the fact that you are bound to walk out with more than you had planned. But who can’t use an extra pair or two of Tom’s especially when the design is exclusive to Nordstrom’s so there is no way you are going to pick them up once you are north of the 49th and anyway, you’ve just bought yet another few pairs of shoes for children in need. (Note: excessive shoe purchase justified.) And for the most part, they are nice people just like you and me who simply want to do the best job they can even on days like Black Friday. Which is why I found the “woman from New York City”(WFNYC), as I have now come to know her, particularly heinous.

I’m not one to make generalizations about extremely large populations of people but, according to WFNYC, all people in New York move quite a lot more quickly than the rest of us. And by the rest of us I mean (and again, I defer to her judgement here) the people of Seattle. Now I am aware that there is a slight tendency for those who are partial to life on the Pacific to be a tad laid back but I am not certain there was evidence of this in the flurry of activity I was witnessing behind the cash desk at Nordstrom’s on this, the busiest shopping day of the year. And yet, her conversation went something like this:

Shoe Consultant: Let me ring this up for you. Was there someone helping you today?
WFNYC: I can’t believe how slow things are here. Just ring the f—— thing up! (Might I add here that this is the first time since the inception of this blog that any such language has been used or alluded to but in this case I am afraid it is germane to the telling of the story so please accept my apology on her behalf.)
WFNYC: I’m from New York! I’m not used to this! Everyone is so slow here!
WFNYC: I can’t believe how slow they are here! I’m from New York! This would never happen in New York!
WFNYC: It’s so slow here! WTF!!!! I’m not used to this!!!!

Well as you can see this was a rather one sided conversation but more importantly, and what should be noted, was that the WFNYC was not only speaking like this to those of us who had the misfortune of being able to hear her but also to whoever it was that she was simultaneously talking to on her phone which solidified for me just how busy a person she really was. And how a delay of even a few seconds was eating into her otherwise “chock full of important things to do” day.

But wait. Isn’t this Black Friday? Is this not a holiday in the U.S. of A? Are not all of the businesses, other than retail closed on this day? And didn’t she mention once or twice that she was from New York? Would it be reasonable then to assume that she was not on her lunch break from work where, if she was a minute late to return would risk being fired on the spot? So where exactly was she going? Now I can’t say this for sure but given the day and the circumstances I’m thinking she was going to do more shopping. Which leaves me to wonder why it was that she couldn’t take a second or two to let the cashier know who had helped her buy her multiple pairs of boots and shoes so that sales person could be appropriately rewarded for their time. Because it seems to me that if you are sleeping in Seattle you should at least take the time to be decent to the people who live and work there.

And then a rather frightening thought occurred to me. For one split second I realized that I may just have met the person who is better placed to write this blog than I am. Good thing she will never have the time to do it.

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Nov 18 2012
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Informative

My New Friend

This week something very special happened to me. I made a new friend. A real, in person friend. Not one of those people who finds you on Facebook by searching “people who at some point in time lived in my city, went to my school, worked for my employer, and/or has a somewhat tenuous connection to me through a friend of a friend of a friend”. Don’t get me wrong. I have lots of those too which is fine since there’s not much maintenance and at least a couple of them probably take the time to read this blog each week. And sometimes it might even make sense to find friends that way.

The other day I went searching through the computer generated list of “friend possibilities” on FB and there amongst all the people who know people I know, was someone whose only common characteristic is that we share exactly the same name. Which I guess is not such a bad thing on which to base a friendship and, I will have to admit, almost made me want to send her a “friend request”. Because I started to imagine what would happen if everyone on FB friended everyone else with the same name. In my case it would generate nine new instant friendships but for some people I would imagine it could run into the hundreds. Think about it. All the people in the world who share the same name could eventually be friends. And every once in awhile they could arrange a get together in one of their cities and it would be really easy for them to meet each other because it eliminates a multitude of problems. No more embarrassing moments trying to put a “name to a face”. No more worries about where to place those silly “Hello, My name is…” name tags that often interfere with the presentation of your painstakingly put together ensemble. And if you have so much to drink that you can’t remember your own name, well there’s going to be someone around who can help you out. I’ll admit that checking in at the hotel could be a little problematic but you have to agree it does shine a whole new light on finding a place where “everyone knows your name”. But I digress.

For many of you who know me well you are probably surprised to find out that I have a new friend since you are accustomed to hearing me say that my “friend drawer is full”. And for the most part, it is. But there are times when you just have to find a little extra space, to make room for just one more paperclip in your mountain of office supplies. And this was that time. This week I made my new friend at the mall while paying for my purchases. Somehow during the usual vacant chit chat that occurs while totals are being tallied and credit cards are being charged, the cashier and I bonded. I mean really bonded. In that very short time I learned enough about her to know we have a ton of stuff in common.

She is 33 years old (ok we don’t have that in common) but she told me that she has lots of older friends so it’s ok. She has a university education and so do I. She recently moved to our city from my old stomping grounds in Ontario. She likes her new digs but she doesn’t like the cold, and I’m with her on that. She likes the same clothes that I do which kind of goes without saying since I was shopping in her store. And she loves a good sale which is how we met in the first place. This relationship moved along so quickly that before we knew it we were planning a shopping trip to Seattle which is, coincidentally where I am going this week, but since she can’t get the time off at such short notice will have to wait until next time.

Now I know some of you are thinking this may not be as real a friendship as I think it is and that I might be better off focusing on connecting with the same name people. But I’m happy with the arrangement that me and my new friend have. I mean let’s face it. She’s always going to smile when she sees me coming; she’s going to do whatever she can to help me out; and no matter what I put on, I’m pretty sure she’s going to tell me that I look great. And as Ms. Warwick would say “that’s what friends are for“.

But you know, now that I think about it, she doesn’t even really know my name.

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