It finally happened. Wait. Perhaps I had better backtrack for just a moment or two. Many of you I’m sure, have noticed that I have been remiss, having not posted to the B.S. sightings section of the blog for quite some time. It’s not that things have changed all that much over the past little while. As far as I can tell I look pretty much the same as always and I believe my doppelganger chanteuse does too. And it’s not that people haven’t continued to notice. As a matter of fact, the sightings themselves have not diminished at the same rate as the writing about them has. It’s just that, for the most part, they’ve pretty much been the run of the mill “has anyone ever told you” events. Well there was one server in Vancouver who used “astonishingly like” in a sentence with regard to my likeness to Ms. Streisand. And there was the make-up salesperson in Toronto who told me how lucky I was to share her resemblance, although I must admit that I silently wondered whether she was really trying to sell me more product. But neither of those inspired me to write an entire paragraph on the encounter. Nothing really had struck as sufficiently unique, until now.
But you’ll have to wait just a little longer because I must digress. You see, there are several parts to this story so it’s going to take some time. If you’ve been following along carefully for the last 2 and a half years, you’ll know that I can oft be found at my local Starbucks, with or without a view of the sea, sipping on a nonfat, no foam latte. It’s just what I do and I particularly like to do it in what those of us “in the know” know as “the comfy chair”. Because you see, at every one of these establishments there is a variety of seating options ranging from “not so comfortable” to “really comfortable”. As a frequent flyer (I’m so far ahead of the game that my SB gold card has pretty much been renewed indefinitely) I am, of course, prone to select the latter option whenever possible. Possible being the key word as, more often than not those comfy chairs are occupied by my compatriots and I’m relegated to something harder and much more wooden. At least for the time being, as before too long the phenomenon best described as the “Starbuck’s Shuffle” begins.
For those of you who have never experienced said shuffle, here’s how it works. First, you plunk yourself down at a table as close to the comfy chairs as possible. Next, you make yourself not too comfortable because hopefully sooner than later, you’ll be moving. Now here’s the tricky part. You need to keep your eye on the prize without raising the suspicions of your fellow sippers lest you end up in a foot race. This next step is important because the very moment (and I mean right away) that you see movement at those comfy chairs, is your cue to swing into action. What you do now is dependent on where you live. In some cities it’s ok to hover, and you can step right up and help those who are leaving, leave. In other cities convention has it that you allow the leavers to leave and only approach the chairs when their previous occupants are sufficiently out of the way. You’ll have to figure this one out for yourself. In either case, it’s never easy but trust me, the reward will be well worth the effort.
So with this in mind, let me tell you what happened last week. As expected, I found myself sitting at a table secretly (I thought) surveying the landscape in an effort to determine which of the comfy chairs were most likely to be vacated first. I’m looking for all of the clues, an almost empty cup, one member of the party making their way to the loo, perhaps a computer being packed up, when suddenly my eyes meet those of another. And at that moment, much to my astonishment, the man whose eyes I had inadvertently met and who, until that very moment was a complete stranger, stands up and without hesitation says “my wife says we should give the comfy chairs to you because (and here it comes) you look like Barbra Streisand.” OMG! They gave up their comfy chairs for me! After all of this time, all of the sightings, all of the witty retorts to “do you know who you look like” I have had to come up with, it finally happened. I’m finally reaping the benefits of being a “look-a-like”. I’m finally living the life!
And now there’s only one problem. I’m just not sure how I’m ever going to sit in one of those hard, wooden chairs again.
I’ve been sick. Not earth shatteringly sick. Not the kind of sick that people should worry about. I mean I haven’t spent the last month ticking off the boxes on my “things I need to do before I die” list. Which, as you know, I don’t have but if I did, this would not have been the time to use it. Really, I should have known. About three weeks ago I got off a plane, one that I had spent five hours sitting on beside my friend who had a cold. She can’t help it. She has little kids and that’s what happens when you have little kids. But I don’t so I can only conclude that you don’t have to have little kids to get sick if you are sitting beside someone who does. For five hours. On a metal tube without any real ventilation. It’s not like I could have opened the window and stuck my head out to get some fresh air. They frown upon that on a plane. So there wasn’t too much I could do except sit there and get sick. Hence, for the past three weeks I have not been feeling that great.
Here’s what I’m thinking. You’re thinking that I’ve been so busy with my “Happy” course that I haven’t had time to write the blog. And perhaps you’re thinking that I’ve become so happy and have found so much meaning in my life that I can no longer find it in my heart to write about being shallow. Of course, that was always a possibility when I signed up for the course. I knew from the “get-go” there was a chance, however slight, that this course could, once and forever, change my inner being, my worldview. Perhaps alter the very core of my existence in this universe of ours. And it might. If I could only get started on it. You see the course is now in Week 3 but unfortunately I’m not. I’m here in the “big city” doing other stuff and since I’m relatively happy anyway, my initial excitement for the course, and for gaining a better understanding about how to be happy and find meaning in my life, has waned. Even so, I still read the emails of encouragement they send to me each and every week so I know that right now, at this very moment, they are talking about the importance of being kind to others which, coincidentally brings me to the thoughts that have been swirling around in my mind for sometime now. Yes, I do think about what to write before I actually get to the writing.
I’m about to embark on another learning journey. Surprised? Me too. But if you have been following me for some time you’ll know that, not too long ago I attended Harvard where I completed a course that explored the rather esoteric concept of justice. Ok, to be fair, I didn’t actually attend Harvard. I took that course online with maybe a hundred thousand or so other people, give or take a few. But I passed and now my Harvard certificate is proudly displayed in a most prominent spot on my office wall. Don’t believe me? Then you haven’t been reading this blog carefully enough. Shallow people know there’s no shame in exploitation when no one gets hurt. And honestly, is there any harm in people expecting you to be just a little smarter than you really are? Or happier? Because you see, for my next foray into the world of academe I will become immersed in the exploration of the “science of happiness”. You heard me right. I’m going to learn how to be happy.
I’ve written about them before and apparently I’m going to write about them again. It seems to me that people like lists. I haven’t actually done the research so can’t say it’s an empirical fact or anything like that, but I do have some evidence to support my hypothesis. Take my 
