Time to Go Shopping

Time to Go Shopping
Part 1

[Author's Note: Since you can't tell from this story's title, I should tell you that it is a continuation of My Baseball Scorecard.]

I always hate to go shopping, but sometimes I just have to face facts and bite the bullet. It’s easiest to face these facts when it comes to food. When I go to the cupboard to get a snack and Eleanor’s Original Hairball Remedy by Iams is all I can come up with, it’s clear that I have to get to the grocery store pretty soon.

But I resist even more vigorously the kind of shopping where I have to go to the mall for OTHER kinds of stores, so I’ve established some rigid guidelines for determining when such a venture is absolutely necessary. There must be at least TWO indicators that a trip to non-food stores is required. For example, I encountered such a situation just the other day.

For the first indicator, I was completely out of red ink. [Remember that I collect and use fountain pens - both modern and vintage.] Now I don’t use red ink straight - I mix it with brown, and the brown is by far the more predominant color in that particular mix. While I like brown a lot since it can look pretty classy, especially on ivory or cream colored paper, I prefer it with an added touch of red to make it not quite so chocolate looking. Now I could probably live without my brown/red mix for a few weeks, but then my coworkers at the office could only ask me “Why do you have so many pens?” instead of their usual “Why do you have so many pens and colors of ink?”

The second indicator that forced me to go shopping was the fact that every one of my socks was worn out just above the heel - where the top of the shoe back hits the sock. And I don’t mean just a little bit worn - there were large holes right through every sock I owned. In the old days, I used to darn my socks, but now that all four of my kids are grown and on their own and I don’t have to spend anything on them anymore, I have this big surplus of money. So now I don’t have to scrimp like I used to, and darning socks is no longer in my routine.

There’s a mall about three minutes from my apartment that has a Paradise Pen Store and a Macy’s Department Store, which means I could get both ink and socks in one shot, and do it in just a few minutes. But I still prefer to do all my pen-related shopping at Fahrney’s, a beautiful store in downtown Washington, DC, which celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2004. Fahrney’s is located just a block from Hecht’s, a local department store on a par with Macy’s. [In fact, long after I had already written this story, Macy’s took over Hecht’s so now Hecht’s is Macy’s rather than Hecht’s. But since it was still Hecht’s when I wrote the story before it became Macy’s, I’m going to keep calling it Hecht’s despite the fact that it’s now officially Macy’s. I hope I didn’t confuse you with all those store names, but I just wanted to make sure you understood that Macy’s bought Hecht’s, even if you really don’t care that much.] Hecht’s carries lots of socks in their inventory, even more than I could possibly need for the rest of my lifetime. And oh yes, Irving’s Sporting Goods is located right between Fahrney’s and Hecht’s.

Now I don’t like driving in Washington because the traffic is really bad all day long - it’s like a never-ending rush hour. I guess it’s a combination of all the politicians driving around and all the reporters following them, but I don’t know for sure. All I know is that it’s always wall-to-wall cars. And besides, when you park downtown, you usually have to let some guy who looks like he just stepped out of a horror movie park your car and you don’t even get to watch him do it. Or maybe it’s better that you don’t get to watch.

So I take the Metro when I go downtown. It avoids all the hassles associated with driving and parking. And besides, you get the added bonus of being able to meet all the nice people who ride the Metro. If you don’t live in the Washington, DC area, I should tell you that the Metro is our subway system.

So after all that buildup to explain how I came to be on the Metro, there I was, sitting in my seat on the subway minding my own business and figuring out just how many socks I was going to buy in the various colors, and what colors of ink besides red I was going to get as long as I was at Fahrney’s, when a young girl sat down next to me. At one time, I would guess she had been a very attractive young lady. But apparently being a very attractive young lady wasn’t good enough for her.

She had her hair done up in some unbelievable arrangement to look like ears of corn protruding from her head. And the color of those ears of corn - it’s hard to even explain what the color was because it isn’t on any color chart I’ve ever seen, and Crayola never made a crayon that looked like that - not even in the big box that comes with the built-in sharpener.

Probably the best way to describe it very briefly without showing you the actual color because I wouldn’t even know where to get something like that to show you, is that it was kind of like lime green, but with some aluminum mixed in to make it almost metallic shiny.

She also had seven earrings running around the entire periphery of each ear, she had a couple of rings that actually penetrated her nose (doesn’t that hurt?), three in each of her cheeks, and an indeterminate number (to me at least) in her tongue. Despite all those things in her tongue, she was chewing gum and doing it with her mouth open, which always makes the picture of a gum-chewer that much more appealing. In the language of a coxswain in an eight-woman rowing shell, she was chewing at eighty strokes per minute.

I won’t even begin to try to describe to you the clothes or tattoos she had because it would be too difficult and wordy, and I don’t want to keep you from your work, which is piling up while you’re sluffing off at the moment just to read this ridiculous nonsense. Or is it sloughing off? I can never remember.

And then out of the clear blue she asks me “Hey, old timer, do you wanna - like - you know - get lucky?”

Time to Go Shopping
Part 2

Now when the girl with the somewhat overstated jewelry and with the unusual hairdo and with the tattoos that put to shame most of the tattoos on some of the saltiest sailors I ever saw in my time in the Navy asked me “Hey, old timer, do you wanna - like - you know - get lucky?”, I couldn’t believe it.

So I said “Don’t even talk to me about getting lucky.” And then I told her about my day at the ballpark when I found a New Jersey lucky quarter with the New Jersey side facing upward which was supposed to be the absolute ultimate in good luck charms, but it didn’t help my team win. And then I told her about how my rabbi said that if I ate three Hebrew National hot dogs, my team would win, and I told her that I got three Hebrew National hot dogs but I only ate two of them because Mike Piazza hit a foul ball off the senator’s glass of beer in the row just in front of me and then the ball bounced off my open bottle of white-out and then the ball hit my third hot dog that was sitting in my lap with a double shot of mustard and relish because the hot dog stand was out of onions, and I wound up with a scorecard covered with my own mustard, relish, and white-out ... and the senator’s beer.

At this point, it appeared that the coxswain had ordered her to slow her gum-chewing pace from eighty strokes a minute down to a mere fifteen, but at least she kept listening. So I told her how I lost my New Jersey lucky quarter by flipping it, trying to figure out what pickup line I should use to ask the nice lady who was sitting next to me at the baseball game if she wanted to go out with me, and I told her that I asked the nice lady out anyway, even without a pickup line, and I told her that the nice lady said yes, and I told her about how my knees sort of buckled a little bit when the nice lady slipped my Skyline fountain pen back into my shirt pocket after she wrote down her name and phone number with it, and I told her that the nice lady probably didn’t even notice that my knees buckled, and I told her how the nice lady and I had a fantastic first date that started out in a restaurant that had cloth napkins and utensils that were made out of real metal instead of that plastic junk that so many eating establishments have these days.

And can you believe it? The girl just turned around and walked away before I could tell her anything more about my date with the nice lady who had once served time in prison near London where she learned all kinds of interesting things about fountain pens and inks from “The Original Iron Lady” who was given that name by her inmates several years before anyone ever thought to call Margaret Thatcher almost the same thing, because they simply called Mrs. Thatcher “The Iron Lady” without any other modifiers.

So I never even found out what her approach to getting lucky was.

Oh well - about that time the subway stopped at Metro Center, which was the station where I had to get off the train to go to Fahrney’s. So I got off and went over to Fahrney’s.

Time to Go Shopping
Part 3

When I walked into Fahrney’s, I pulled out my shopping list. First on the list, of course, was my Waterman red ink that was the main driving force that steered me to Fahrney’s in the first place. I picked up two bottles from their nice wooden cabinet where the ink is stored - a beautiful piece of furniture in itself.

I also saw they still had their seventy-fifth anniversary bottle, etched with a large 75 circled by small words saying “Fahrney’s Pens Seventy-Fifth Anniversary.” It comes filled with Fahrney’s sepia ink, and costs $45. Yes, I know that’s a pretty steep price for one bottle of ink, but I think it’s a nice-looking bottle with a beautiful brass cap that I can use for other inks after the sepia is gone, and besides, I think that it’s important to continue supporting the store so it will still be around for another seventy-five years. So I got a bottle of that as well.

I had checked my inventory of other inks before leaving my apartment to see what else I needed so I wouldn’t have to come rushing back to Fahrney’s for more ink in just a month and get stuck on the Metro where you might run into some really strange folks. I got two bottles each of Waterman’s Florida blue, South Seas blue, and violet, and three bottles each of Waterman’s brown and green. This should keep me going for at least a year - maybe two.

I also picked up a box of Crane’s note cards, so I could send the nice lady a thank you card telling her how much I had enjoyed our first date three evenings ago. We didn’t have any of those awkward moments you usually have on a first date, and we had a great time. It was a three-part date because I wanted to go all out for her so I could learn all the things she had learned about fountain pens and inks from The Original Iron Lady back in the days when The Original Iron Lady was transforming her from a criminal into the nice lady that I saw before me now at the dinner table. I don’t know what shape she was in when The Original Iron Lady started on her, but she is looking pretty darned good now. I didn’t even keep checking to make sure my watch and my wallet were still where they were supposed to be, like I sometimes have to do on other dates.

We started out with dinner at Ruby Tuesday, because I wanted to show her some real class – I was going whole hog on this date – totus porcus – as Admiral Jacky Fisher of the Royal Navy used to say almost a hundred years ago. In case you missed it in my talk to the girl on the Metro because I had a run-on sentence or two there, this restaurant had nice plates – now they weren’t fancy bone china or anything like that, but at least they weren’t those styrofoam boxes that you get at most eating places. They had napkins that were made out of cloth instead of paper. They even had utensils that were genuine metal intead of plastic, and it wasn’t that metal that you could bend with two fingers, either.

The nice lady just wanted a rather small salad, but I got the lo-carb pound-and-a-half monster burger with lo-fat pepper mayonnaise and lite French fries washed down with a Diet Seven-Up and topped off with some really yummy no-cal raspberry cheesecake. I just love these new dishes they have there, because the more food you eat, the more weight you lose. But I was afraid it might be too much of a turnoff to the nice lady if I got the lo-carb two-pound monster burger, so I settled for the smaller version despite the fact that I’ll probably lose less weight that way.

Being on my best behavior, I didn’t put my elbows on the table, not even once, and I used my metal fork instead of my fingers for eating my lite French fries. I also used my metal knife and metal fork on the monster burger because it was way too thick to get my mouth around it anyway. And every now and then I used my cloth napkin to wipe my mouth - I was very careful to avoid using my jacket’s sleeve for that. I didn’t even drip anything on my tie as far as I could tell, but I didn’t want to be checking it too often for spills or she might think there was something wrong with me.

But now I’m getting sidetracked from my shopping mission by reminiscing too much about my date with the nice lady, which you really don’t care about anyway since you’re certainly not a yenta like all those other busybodies who have nothing better to do than to sit around gossiping about trivial matters for hours on end.

I should get back on topic before you get ticked off at my wandering onto side shows about the nice lady, so I’ll tell you that I then selected a couple of Aurora Ipsilon rollerballs to give the doctor and nurse who just last month performed a miracle outpatient surgical procedure on me. Now I’m not going to say exactly what the procedure was, because you might get sick to your stomach if I told you. But it worked perfectly and I should be good for another sixty-two years in that department, so it was a happy ending and you need not be concerned about any further gruesome details.

I got the doctor a black pen and the nurse a green one.

Time to Go Shopping
Part 4

As for the rollerballs for the doctor and nurse who had done such a good job on me, the clerk told me that with the engraving (RCR for the doctor and SMH for the nurse) and the sales tax, it came to $105 for each pen. The guy standing next to me at the counter, who was test driving a Pelikan M800 fountain pen, asked me why I’m buying these pens from Fahrney’s at $105 apiece, when I can get them online for $50 each.

I told him I realized I could get the pens online for less money, but I also told him that I like to support Fahrney’s since it is such a pleasure to shop there, where I can bask in the presence of all these great pens in such a beautiful setting. When I asked him why he was trying out the M800 when he can get it online for less, he said he never had one and he just wanted to see how it writes before he buys one online. I tried to explain that if everybody comes in only to try pens out before buying online, and nobody buys them from Fahrney’s, then one day Fahrney’s isn’t going to be there anymore for future test drives. He said that’s not his problem - his problem is how to save money.

I noticed that he was taking pictures with his cellphone of the M800 pen and several other pens on display, so I asked him what he pays for his cellphone plan. He answered that the phone costs him $89 per month for his phone and his wife’s matching unit when you include the price of the phones, which you should probably do since it would be hard to do much talking without them. But he added that he gets 1,000 free minutes each month so it’s a real bargain.

So I couldn’t help but ask him what he talks about to use up his 1,000 free minutes that cost him $89 each month, to which he replied “It’s easy to use that much. Just a few minutes ago, I called my wife to tell her that my left shoulder was itching and I was planning to scratch it to see if that would make the itch stop itching. And then a few minutes later I called her back again and asked her which hand she thought I use for scratching my left shoulder and she said I should use my right hand. And then a few minutes later I called to ask her if I should scratch from side to side or up and down and she said either one, side to side or up and down would work. And then a few minutes later I called her back again to tell her that I scratched the itch on my left shoulder with my right hand with side to side scratching and sure enough, it stopped itching.”

So I asked him if he isn’t embarrassed to be heard in public having a conversation that a three-year old child would consider moronic, and he said he doesn’t worry about that because nobody around him can actually hear him when he talks because he pretends he is sitting in a soundproof phonebooth. He also said that given the 1,000 free minutes each month, he has to be really creative in thinking up ludicrous topics to discuss that nobody with ten percent of a functional brain would even think to call someone about if the minutes weren’t free as part of their $89 per month cell phone plan.

I asked him what he talks about when he doesn’t have an itch report to file, and he told me that he’s currently in the process of calling all his friends and telling them he’s removing the shift key from his keyboard. When I asked him why he would do that, he said “So all my friends will know I’m removing the shift key.” I said “No, I don’t mean why are you calling your friends; I mean why are you removing your shift key?”

He explained that it’s really too hard to always have to push the shift key, and besides that, it takes so much coordination because you have to push the shift key at exactly the same time as when you’re pushing that other key, and besides that, it strains his brain to have to remember that entire set of mind-boggling rules about when you’re supposed to push the shift key and when you’re not. He continued with the explanation that if he doesn’t even HAVE a shift key, he can use that as an excuse if anybody accuses him of being too lazy and too stupid to know when he should push the shift key and when he shouldn’t.

Remembering that I had other fish to fry on this shopping trip, I said “Excuse me - but I have to go” to the test driver who saved $100 by buying his pen online after trying it out for free at Fahrney’s so he could sink those savings, and considerably more, into a cellphone plan that allows him to file itch reports with whomever might be enough of a dullard to actually listen to him.

I paid for my purchases and gave the clerk my address so he could send me the rollerballs for the doctor and nurse after they had been engraved. Then I set off for Hecht’s down the street to get those socks I desperately needed because every sock I owned had a huge hole just above the heel, and it was getting harder and harder to conceal those holes.

On the way to Hecht’s, a smile came to my face as I thought back to the second part of my date three evenings ago with the nice lady from the baseball game, the one who once served time in that prison near London and who learned a lot about fountain pens and inks from her prison training from The Original Iron Lady. That second part of the date was at a super concert given by the Regimental Band of the Scots Guards along with the Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch over at the Patriot Center on the campus of George Mason University.

Don’t you just love it when the rafters and the floor and the chairs pulsate to the powerful rhythms of Scotland the Brave and Rule Britannia and The British Grenadier and Men of Harlech?

I sure do.

Time to Go Shopping
Part 5

When I walked into Hecht’s Department Store, I remembered that I would have to go through the women’s department on my way to the men’s department where the socks were displayed, despite the fact that I really didn’t need anything from the women’s department today. While I was passing through the fragrances part of the women’s department, I vaguely noticed someone out of the corner of my eye who looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. Then she yelled out “You’re the bum that kept getting up to get hot dogs at the baseball game the other day, aren’t you?”

I thought for a minute and then it hit me - it was Hatpin Hattie - the lady whose seat I had to pass on my way to and from the concession stands at RFK Stadium! I answered her by saying “Yes, I did, because my rabbi said I had to eat three Hebrew National hot dogs for the Nationals to win the game. But I only ATE two of them.” I didn’t want to waste time telling her WHY I didn’t eat the third hot dog because I was tired of doing that since I had to tell the girl with the unusual hairdo and all the tattoos and the earrings that were stuck in her tongue the same thing back when I was on the Metro, explaining to her why I didn’t want to hear about whatever she wanted to do that would help me get lucky, because nothing else seemed to succeed in getting me lucky anyway.

To make a long story short, I wound up getting doused with Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds set at the steady spray setting instead of the mist setting. Hatpin Hattie had more weapons than just her hatpin. I was really reeking. The stuff was literally dripping off me.

I continued onward to the men’s department with everybody staring at me wondering if I was maybe a little weird since I had so much of Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds on me. At least they just looked - and nobody asked me why I smelled so good, so I didn’t have to explain about Hatpin Hattie armed with her spray gun and the whole baseball game scenario because I don’t want to have to go through that long-winded explanation ever again for the rest of my life.

When I reached the men’s department and found where the socks were displayed, my mind drifted back to the second part of my first date with the nice lady where we were going to see the Scots Guards and the Black Watch perform. We had just parked the car and were walking toward the Patriot Center, which is one of those big indoor arenas with a basketball court or hockey rink in the center of about 12,000 spectator seats that surround the court.

There were lots of outdoor fields around the Patriot Center, and the nice lady asked me “Don’t you just love the look and the smell of grass that’s been freshly mown by somebody else?” I was dumbfounded because those were my sentiments exactly, except I never said them so succintly. I used to say “I love the look and smell of freshly-mown grass” and I used to say “I hate to mow the lawn” but I had never managed to combine the two together so elegantly. I was starting to like the nice lady more and more with each passing minute.

When we went in, there were lots of people milling around before taking their seats, including several wearing kilts. I guess we have some transplanted Scotsmen living here in Northern Virginia, or maybe they were diplomats who came over from Washington, DC. We passed up the snacks that were available because the nice lady had already eaten a salad back at Ruby Tuesday, and I had finished all of my lo-carb monster burger. I was thinking it might be another week or so before I could eat anything else, which may be the weight-loss secret of the lo-carb monster burger, so we just went straight to our seats.

In just a few minutes the house lights went down and the Regimental Band of the Scots Guards entered the arena from our left. A few seconds later the Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch entered from our right. They were playing Scotland the Brave which always gets my heart really pumping even when the nice lady isn’t sitting right next to me.

They started out with the combined bands playing Highland Laddie and The Glendaurel Highlanders, and I had my toes tapping about a mile a minute to keep time because both of those songs can really get me going. Then they started a piece playing very softly, with just the brass in the Scots Guards, and I knew the piece sounded familiar. I couldn’t place it - as hard as I tried - but I wasn’t about to ask the nice lady and show my ignorance - that would be like stopping for directions when I’m lost in my car. So I just kept thinking and thinking, and before I knew it, the combined bands really jacked it up big time - the brass started booming and the pipes started wailing and the drums started rumbling. The whole building was shaking - and it wasn’t just my imagination.

With all that going, it finally hit me like a strong right cross to the jaw that it was Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I hadn’t recognized it because I had never heard a military band playing it, especially with bagpipes, and I had never realized just how perfect it was for that situation. The cadence is ideal for marching and I really wanted to go march.

I think the nice lady figured that out from watching me because she said “Do you notice that everybody down there marching has either a kilt or a bearskin hat, and you have neither? So just calm down and don’t wear yourself out before we even leave the building.”

Time to Go Shopping
Part 6

Now I wanted to tell the nice lady that I wasn’t going to wear myself out just by trying to march while still seated at the concert, because I spend over ten hours in the gym each week, and only a little bit of that is in the sauna where I just sit and read the newspaper. But I didn’t want to miss any of Ode to Joy so I just kept my mouth shut.

After the Scots Guards and the Black Watch finished Ode to Joy, they played a bunch of other pieces, some with the Scots Guards alone, some with the Black Watch alone, and others where the two bands were combined. And then they came to Amazing Grace which was super. It included a brief refrain with a Lone Piper which makes it all the more stirring. They went on to play several American pieces, including some Sousa marches that they did extremely well. The only thing I wasn’t thrilled with was their rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic which I thought lacked some of the oomph that they had shown in Ode to Joy when the whole building was shaking. Oh well - that was the only semi-disappointing part of the concert.

I was a little surprised to see when they started a combined version of Men of Harlech that the nice lady leaped to her feet and gave what seemed to be the British equivalent of a Rebel Yell. I asked her what that was all about and she said it was her tribute to The Original Iron Lady who had straightened her out, because the nice lady considered Men of Harlech to be sort of an unofficial anthem for Wales and The Original Iron Lady is Welsh. She said that I wouldn’t have recognized her BEFORE The Original Iron Lady transformed her, so I decided maybe I should stand up also as a salute to Wales myself. And I also silently thanked The Original Iron Lady for completing whatever transformation she had done because the end result was pretty overwhelming even if I didn’t know where the starting point was.

Then they started Scotland the Brave again (it had been the opening piece for the concert) which caused me to be torn between the rapture of enjoying its moving strains and the agony that comes with knowing that this was the Finale. The concert was soon officially over, and we were off for the third part of our date.

The concert ended at 10:30 PM so we still had time to see the movie Fever Pitch which had a late showing at the Cineplex Odeon! It turned out that the nice lady is almost as avid a fan of the Boston Red Sox as I am, and she hadn’t seen Fever Pitch yet. She’s not quite as much a fan as I am mainly because she got such a late start, being hung up on cricket for the first part of her life. Who can tell what’s happening in that oddball game? But baseball is another matter, especially when it involves the Red Sox.

Well, if you haven’t seen Fever Pitch yet, I should tell you it’s certainly not a candidate for an Academy Award, nor will it ever rival Casablanca as an all-time film classic. But being a Red Sox fan since 1949 when I was seven years old, I think most Red Sox fans love it. It does a great job of capturing the obsession that many of us have for the Red Sox, although I would guess that only a few of us go quite as far as Ben, the main character’s name in the movie.

The nice lady almost fell out of her seat laughing when they showed a glimpse of Ben’s apartment, which is worth the price of admission alone, as you wouldn't think anyone could get nearly that many Red Sox items into a couple of rooms. I was better prepared for this sight because I had already seen the movie the day it came out, so I had done my falling off the chair laughing routine before we even arrived at the Cineplex Odeon on the night of our date.

And the minute or so of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline coming in on a super sound system that vibrates your chair and makes you feel like you’re actually sitting in Fenway Park while the Sox are whooping it up on the Yankees, rivalled even the Scots Guards and the Black Watch concert when they were pulsating the Patriot Center with Ode to Joy and Men of Harlech.

When we got back to the nice lady’s apartment after the movie, she asked me if I would like to come in for some coffee, so I asked her if she has cable TV. She said no, and asked why I would ask such a ridiculously stupid question at a time like this.

I told her we had been out on our date for almost seven hours now, and I hadn’t had a single update on the Anna Nicole Smith case in all that time. [Remember that this all happened a while back, when Anna Nicole Smith was still alive.] I said I would take a raincheck on the coffee, because I had to rush home to turn on CNN and find out what late-breaking developments had come up over the course of our date, which was the longest date I’ve ever had all at one time. There were new twists being added constantly to Anna’s case, as you can readily tell from the nearly 24-hour coverage that all the cable news stations have been providing, and it was crucial to stay abreast of the ever-evolving situation. Some of the stations had even suspended doing commercials because there was so much important news to pass on to the viewers.

I told her I would telephone her as soon as I got situated in my apartment and was caught up on all the latest developments in Anna’s case, to make sure she was OK (she being the nice lady, and not Anna Nicole Smith, who was anything but OK at that point according to all the cable news channels). Apparently the nice lady is not as concerned about Anna Nicole Smith as I am. And I’ll bet she doesn’t care about Paris Hilton either.

Time to Go Shopping
Part 7

You professional shoppers out there might be pleased to know that at this point, my mind drifted back from my date with the nice lady, and concentrated again on the shopping that was supposed to rebuild the sock portion of my wardrobe. Anyway, I picked out three pairs each of black, blue, dark green, and dark gray socks. Twelve pairs of socks should last me at least ten years so I sure hoped I wouldn’t have to go shopping for socks again in the near future.

I paid for them using my Hecht’s credit card, which allowed me to get a 15% discount right off the bat because they were having a big sale that day. I had forgotten to bring the coupon that would have given me another 10% off, because I’m always forgetting to bring the coupons. I’m much better at cutting out the coupons and saving the coupons than I am about actually bringing the coupons to the store where they can be of any value. Usually I find that I have to throw away about ten or so expired coupons each month and I hardly ever remember to use more than one in a given month, if that many. If I had any sense, I would probably just stop trying already.

But you serious shoppers, the ones who always remember to bring your coupons to the store, will probably now also be distressed to hear that right after I paid for my socks and started walking back toward the Metro station to catch the train for home, my mind wandered back to the nice lady again. It just wasn’t easy to get her out of my mind.

I guess that’s another way of saying that anybody who is pleased that I was now drifting back to reminisce some more about the nice lady, is actually one of those yentas that we discussed in an earlier episode of this long-winded saga, if you can remember back that far.

Anyway, regardless of whether you’re a professional shopper or a yenta (I guess someone could be both - and a few of us undoubtedly are), I’m going to get on with the tale. For those of you who may have forgotten where we left off last because of that confusing detour through the coupon field, it was as follows.

After leaving the nice lady so I could rush home for a CNN update on the Anna Nicole Smith case, I began worrying that maybe my first date and my last date with her would be one and the same. I called her the next day, and the day after that, but she hung up on me both times. Well, at least she answered the phone, so I took that to be a somewhat positive sign. At least it was better treatment than I usually get when I call other women back after a date, which is no answer at all.

Sure enough by the third day, she had calmed down enough to talk, and she agreed to another date on the condition that she would take priority over Anna Nicole Smith. Since the Anna Nicole Smith case had finally been resolved by this time and I didn’t have to worry about any new twists or turns in it, I agreed to that re-arrangement of priorities. And Paris Hilton wasn’t doing anything worthy of around-the-clock coverage at that point. Of course, things can always change in a hurry.

So we went to the Outback Steakhouse - in honor of The Original Iron Lady who now lives in Australia. In fact, the nice lady didn’t even realize that The Original Iron Lady had moved back to Australia until I told her. [Author's note: The Original Iron Lady is a member of a fountain pen collectors chat site that I belong to.] The nice lady had lost track of The Original Iron Lady when she (the nice lady, that is) was released from prison. Saying ‘she’ is always confusing when there is more than one woman involved in the story, and the more interesting stories almost always involve more than one woman. If I just said “when she was released from prison” you would have to figure out for yourself that ‘she’ referred to the nice lady, who once served a prison term, and did NOT refer to The Original Iron Lady, who was straightening out the nice lady while the nice lady was an inmate in prison under The Original Iron Lady’s care.

Lots of people use ‘she’ (or ‘they’) as if the listener can immediately read the narrator’s mind as to which ‘she’ (or ‘they’) the narrator happens to be speaking about at the moment. I remember one narrator who tossed out ‘she’ three times in one sentence meaning three different women, and he assumed the listener could work it all out for himself. But I’ve been burned by that particular mistake so many times that I now make an extra effort to avoid it. Now the yentas out there are probably saying I wish he would stop explaining all this junk ad nauseum and get back to the story already. So I’ll do just that, because there’s nothing more cruel than keeping a yenta waiting for what she thinks will be the juicy part of a story, even if it really won’t be.

Now for those of you who don’t have an Outback Steakhouse in your neighborhood, it is even nicer than Ruby Tuesday, which is pretty near the top of the line when it comes to restaurants because at both of these places they take your food order at your table and then bring the food to you, and you don’t have to stand in line at the counter and place your order and then bring the food back to your table yourself on some kind of a crummy plastic tray - and I mean crummy in more ways than one. And besides that, you don’t even have to clear your own table when you’re finished eating at Outback or Ruby Tuesday.

Ruby Tuesday was where the nice lady and I went for dinner on our first date. Things went very well at the Outback Steakhouse on our second date, and we didn’t discuss Anna Nicole Smith or Paris Hilton or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or President Bush or Nancy Pelosi, or any of those people who seem to make it big on the news these days. I can’t tell you exactly what we DID talk about because it’s none of your business, even if those of you who are yentas want to make it your business.

The Outback Steakhouse doesn’t have dancing, so after we finished our dinner, we went to Cowboys and Cowgirls, a country-western dance hall that plays old songs that I like, since I’m even older than all of their old songs. It’s just down the street from the Outback.

It turns out the nice lady is a very good dancer, as she has an obvious inborn dancing ability to go along with the lessons given in the prison ballroom. While I don’t want to get sidetracked from our being in the middle of the dance floor at Cowboys and Cowgirls, I’ll briefly interject that later that evening she showed me some pictures taken in the prison ballroom, and I had no idea that English prisons were so well furnished. The hardwood floors were as magnificent as any you can find in the Bellvue Stratford Hotel ballrooms in downtown Philadelphia.

And in one of the pictures, you could see The Original Iron Lady with her nightstick in her right hand, beating the palm of her left hand with the nightstick. The nice lady explained that you had to keep perfect time with the music if you didn’t want to get whacked by The Original Iron Lady during the dancing lessons in the prison ballroom. The nice lady promised me that if I behaved like a gentleman when we were back at her place and not in the middle of the dance floor at Cowboys and Cowgirls, she would show me a scar she had gotten from The Original Iron Lady, who had once whacked her with the nightstick for missing a step in a Viennese waltz.

When we started waltzing to Dwight Yoakam’s rendition of South of Cincinnati I could instantly tell she had that perfect combination of slight resistance so as not to be a dishrag, while still yielding enough so that she was always moving in the right direction without having to be pushed around the floor. If you dance, you know what I mean about the perfect combination of resistance and yielding. And she was still up on all the old line dances like Slapping Leather done to Dancin’ Cowboys by the Bellamy Brothers. Since you have to face each of the four walls at some point in that dance, I got to watch how she moved her behind to the music. She moved it extremely well and didn’t miss any beats.

When the disk jockey decided he was ready to pack it in for the night, I asked the nice lady if she would care to come back to my apartment. I explained that there were lots of things to see there - she could meet my cat Eleanor who just last week taught herself a new party animal trick, and she could see my fountain pens, my collection of San Antonio postcards from the 1940s and ‘50s, the two large watercolor paintings I had gotten from my sister who does them professionally, and my empty ink bottles which I had once arranged to look like the Colosseum in Rome until Eleanor re-arranged it one day while I was at work. In one afternoon, Eleanor managed to do more damage to my ink bottle model of the Colosseum than the passage of 2,000 years has done to the real thing.

When we got there, Eleanor greeted us at the front door.

Time to Go Shopping
Part 8

When Eleanor met us at the front door of my apartment, and we came in, Eleanor did what she usually does when it’s just me coming in the door - she ran to the center of the living room rug and laid on her back, with her paws going every which way so she could get some belly rubs. I took this as a sign that Eleanor was accepting the nice lady already. Franklin, who was my beloved cat before Eleanor, would always run to my bedroom and hide under the bed if anybody other than myself came through the door.

The nice lady went over to give Eleanor the belly rubs she was hoping for, and Eleanor let her do it. What a great start! Then I showed the nice lady my two big watercolors that my sister painted for me, one of the Municipal Auditorium where I saw my first circus, had my first and last piano recital of my entire lifetime on the very same evening, and where my high school graduation was held many years later. I also showed her the other painting from my sister, of San Antonio’s Southern Pacific Railroad Station where the Sunset Limited was pulling out on its westward run to Los Angeles early in the morning.

Then I asked the nice lady if she would like either a fruit juice or one of the exotic coffees that I learned how to make from all of our coffee gourmets who reveal their secrets on line. She opted for my grapefruit and tangerine juice mix because she doubted that I could duplicate any of those special coffees from the gourmets without coffee beans or a bean grinder. All I had was my seven-year old Mister Coffee drip machine, and just plain Folgers French Roast that comes in a can, which would probably make the true coffee gourmets sick if they even thought about doing that.

After we finished our drinks, I showed the nice lady my fountain pens, starting with the modern ones, leaving the vintage ones - my favorites - for last. She liked my four Sheaffer Balance IIs, my two Parker Duofolds, my two Auroras (an Optima and a Talentum), my two Pelikan M800s, my Waterman Patrician, and my three Sheaffer Connaisseurs.

Then we moved on to the vintage pens. I even let her write with Uncle Hymie’s gold-filled Wahl which has a pocket clip instead of a ringtop because Aunt Ann would never let him out of the house with a ringtop on a gold chain, since that was what women used. So you can tell I had a lot of faith in her abilities with pens, because I usually don’t let anybody even touch Uncle Hymie’s pen. I showed her my vintage Parker Vacumatics with their two-toned nibs, one of which is the same vintage as me, down to the exact same quarter. I showed her my vintage Sheaffer Balances, some of which have two-toned nibs and some of which just have monotone.

They all write very well regardless of the number of tones on their nibs. Of course, I sent any of the pens that didn’t write smoothly off to a nibmeister for smoothing, because I didn’t want to risk messing any of them up by doing it myself. Someday, I’ll get around to trying to smooth a nib on a cheap pen so I can learn and not have to be relying on nibmeisters, because I’ve found out that the so-called nibmeisters aren’t always as great as I once thought.

Then I showed her my five Eversharp Skylines, three of which have flexible nibs, and my two Esterbrook J series pens just like the ones I used to use in my schooldays. And I showed her my model of the Colosseum in Rome that was made out of all my empty ink bottles after Eleanor had re-arranged it to look like a mass of rubble in just about any city. I didn’t have any pictures of what it was like before Eleanor re-arranged it because I didn’t realize that Eleanor planned on re-arranging it. Otherwise I would have taken some pictures because it probably would have won a prize, if anybody awarded prizes for things made out of empty ink bottles.

I also showed the nice lady some of my postcards from San Antonio that I have framed in collages of ten cards per collage. She liked the one of the La Fonda, which is the Mexican restaurant where we always used to go when I was growing up, where we had to wait in the waiting room, sitting quietly on the wickerwork furniture that was painted green, for what always seemed like hours before they called our name. But it was probably just a few minutes because none of us ever starved to death, or even came close. She also liked the one of Christie’s, which is the seafood restaurant where I always got the fried shrimp dinner for $1.10 – that came with a lot of French fries and iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing on it. But that was in the 1950s so it’s not really as cheap as it sounds. And those shrimp were really big too! Either that, or I was really little. It was so long ago that I don’t remember which of those it was. But I’ve never found a place that can match Christie’s for fried shrimp.

And I showed her the Medical Arts building where I used to go to the dentist and he drilled on me without using Novocain. Many years later I found out that Novocain existed long before I did, so I don’t know if that dentist was a sadist who hated six-year old kids, or just someone who didn’t keep up with the latest in technological advances.

When I started to show the nice lady the second collage of ten cards (I have three so far and am working on my fourth), she said she was all postcarded out - it must be some British term because I never heard that word used quite that way.

So I put on a Celine Dion CD and we sat down on my couch to let Celine sing to us as if we were in Las Vegas at one of those night clubs that charge about $95 a ticket - except that we weren’t paying anything because it was just my sofa and my stereo in my apartment in Arlington, Virginia, and we weren’t anywhere near Las Vegas. Eleanor didn’t know what to make of all this because I hadn’t had any women visitors over since her arrival on December 27, 2004. But she liked the nice lady so she joined us on the sofa too. Eleanor is a big Celine Dion fan, but it’s only because Eleanor thinks Celine Dion is a mouse hiding in that big box next to the television - a mouse who can sing really well.

Just as I was seeing if I could put my arm around the nice lady to rest my hand on her shoulder without having her whack me something fierce in the stomach with her elbow, like what sometimes happens when I try to do that to other ladies, Eleanor decided that this would be a good time to demonstrate her new party animal trick that she had just learned last week. Now I’m sure you all either have cats now, or had them at one time in the past, and that your cats all have (or had) unique party animal tricks of their own. So I should probably explain what Eleanor’s party animal trick is - just in case it’s different from your cat’s.

Sometimes Eleanor goes into the closet where I keep my box of plastic bags from the grocery, so I can take them back to the recycle bin at the store when I get enough of them. Well, Eleanor learned that if she sticks her head through the handles of a grocery bag, that she can then dash around our apartment so the bag streams out behind her like Superman’s cape does when he’s flying to rescue somebody in distress.

Now even though the nice lady didn’t whack me in the stomach like other women sometimes do when I try to put my arm around their shoulders, she did burst out laughing about Eleanor’s escapades. You really have to see Eleanor doing her party animal trick to get a full appreciation of it - she’s running about 60 miles per hour with her plastic bag and her tail streaming out behind her in parallel lines, so it’s some kind of a sight.

Time to Go Shopping
Part 9

At this point, after remembering Eleanor’s party animal trick while I was putting my arm around the nice lady and laughing to myself about Eleanor’s appearance with her plastic bag streaming out behind her like Superman’s cape, I stopped thinking about our second date and started paying attention to what I was doing at the moment. I was on my way to the Metro Center Station to catch the subway back to my apartment. My shopping trip had finally been completed, as I was loaded down with a bag from Fahrney’s holding a box of Crane’s note cards and fifteen bottles of ink, as well as a bag from Hecht’s with my twelve pairs of socks.

I hadn’t eaten in a while, but luckily there are street vendors with little booths on wheels all over the streets in downtown Washington. These booths on wheels sell everything you can get at a baseball game, and then some. For example, in the booths you can get those soft pretzels that taste so good with mustard on them, but I don’t think you can get them at a baseball game. At least not here.

I first learned about the soft pretzels with mustard on them after our first child, a daughter, was born in Philadelphia in 1970. Back in those days, the women stayed in the hospital for two or even three days after giving birth, compared to these days now when they have to clear out 24 hours after the big event.

Anyway, I discovered pretzels during those two or three days because they didn’t bring me any of those fantastic trays of delicious hospital food like what my wife got. I guess they didn’t think I worked hard enough during the ordeal to be placed on the food distribution list.

So before I got to the Metro, I got myself a pretzel with mustard - you can’t eat on the Metro or you can be put in jail. These pretzels are good, but not quite as good as when it’s really cold outside. I sat down to eat it because I hate to walk and eat at the same time, although that doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people, who can eat while they are walking. I hope I’m never in such a rush that I have to do that - if I am in a hurry to get somewhere, I just eat some other time.

Anyway, while I’m sitting on a stone flowerbox on a sidewalk, eating my pretzel and minding my own business, this weird looking guy sits down next to me and opens his briefcase. It turns out that he is representing a number of clients - he has several performance-enhancing drugs at unbelievably low prices - but I can’t mention the names of these drugs, or your computer will get upset about it - or maybe you will get upset too. He then says he also offers mortgages at rates lower than any bank, and adds that he represents four people from Nigeria who have just come into millions of dollars and would like for me to have several of those millions just because I’m such a nice guy. He also sells Rolex watches (both genuine and replica), he knows several bored housewives who are very anxious to come over to my place, plus a few teenage girls who want to do the same thing, and he has a line on three chicks who want to come visit me all in one night if I would only consent to buy some product that makes big ones out of little ones, along with couple of other products that are too disgusting to describe. Who thinks up these things anyway? And who buys them so they can keep trying to sell them? Somebody must buy them or they would give up and stop hounding us.

I was very flattered that all these people wanted to help me out, but it was almost as bad as turning on my computer in the morning and seeing 150 unwanted spams clogging up my e-mail in-box. So I told him that I knew the lady in Hecht’s at the women’s fragrances counter pretty well, the one who is armed with a spray gun of Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds, and I was sure that she would be interested in several of those things. Since Hecht’s was only a half a block away, he eagerly packed up his briefcase and set out for the store.

When finally I got home, and said hello to Eleanor, and gave her the belly rubs she has to have whenever I first walk in the door, I went to put all my credit card receipts in the right places so I could check the statements when they arrive, and I put away all my new purchases. I have all my Hecht’s information in the Hecht’s envelope, and all my VISA information in the VISA envelope, and all my Macy’s information in the Macy’s envelope.

I have cut way back and only have three credit cards now, after having had about twenty when I was married. Not only do I have considerably fewer credit cards than when I was married, I also have considerably fewer (and smaller) bills from those credit cards. I guess the number of bills you have is directly proportional to the number of credit cards you have, and is not in any way related to your marital status.

After all my receipts were properly filed, I took all the stickers off the socks and took them off those little plastic hangers, and put the socks in my laundry bag so I could wash them the next time I do laundry. Now that could be a month or so, since I just did my laundry last month. You see, I live in an apartment building that has washers and dryers in the basement. This is inconvenient in one way, in that you have to be fully dressed to do your laundry, but as a compensating factor, you can do about six or seven loads simultaneously so you can wait a long time between laundry days.

Then I put all my new ink in my armoire, where I have a shelf just for my ink bottles. A few shelves over from my ink is the shelf for my undershirts. I happened to look at the top undershirt in the pile, and saw that it had a hole in the front, a few inches below the neckband. I then looked at the second one in the pile, and it had a hole in the same spot! I kept checking farther and farther down the pile, and can you believe it? Every undershirt I own has a hole!

The hell with it - I button my shirts, so the holes in my undershirts won’t even show.

THE END

Very funny little personal essays here, Dick Z. But I must say that if you're in the habit of buying-- and (gasp!) actually consuming comestibles from street vendors, you much be living extremely dangerously!