My Life as a Seinfeld Episode

One of the first jobs I had was working in retail. I've worked in all kinds of stores; shoe, jewelry and clothing. I remember one Christmas season when I was working at the clothing store and running late. I had a tendency of always running late, sometimes really late. My hair was as big as my attitude and I thought I had everything figured out like most of us in our early 20's. As I pulled into the mall parking lot like a bat out of hell, going way too fast and frantically looking for a spot, a guy backed out of a spot in front of me. I had to slam on my brakes because I was going so fast and narrowly avoided side swiping the car. Like any 20 something who was at fault but couldn't admit it, I did what came naturally, I got pissed at the guy who pulled out in front of me. I waved my fist in the air and flagged him with one dramatic middle finger while mouthing words I would never say in front of a priest. The guy, who was most likely equally startled at the sight of my black Ford Tempo racing towards him and the sight of me inside with all my big hair raging around me, looked frightened for a moment, but then he returned my fistful of anger with his own. I locked eyes with the guy and remembered his face. He pulled forward, I drove around him and ran inside to work. The situation wrapped up as quick as it had started, at least it did in my mind.

About a week later, I was back at work for a day shift on a Saturday. My boss was looking forward to her lunch break because she was meeting family and they were going to do some Christmas shopping. I was behind the counter checking out a customer. As I finished putting her item in the bag I looked up and saw someone standing off to the side of the cash wrap but didn't take a good look at them. As my customer left my boss walked up and said, "OK, I'm going to head to lunch now, my dad's here" and she looked in the direction behind me. I turned around and low and behold there's the man from the parking lot incident! My boss made the introduction, "Dad, I want you to meet my coworker, Marianne." My face must have turned a million shades of crimson. He looked me in the eye, those same eyes that I had looked into a week prior,(and flipped a massive bird to), and said, "Oh, we met last week in the parking lot, I'm Tanya's father."

I had some explaining and apologizing to do that afternoon when my boss returned from lunch.

The world is a small, small place. And just when you think it's big, it gets even smaller.

This past winter I started taking boot camp or as I like to call it, booty camp. I took the class with my friend twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays. We realized right away that there was a clique of sorts in booty camp. This clique consisted of the die hard boot campers who had been taking the class for years, unlike my friend and I. The instructor called the members of the clique by their first names which meant he knew them well. He would ask them to do stuff like set up equipment, put weights away, etc. I was kind of happy the instructor didn't know my name after seeing the chores he would make them do.

The clique had a group of girls that consisted of a few really butchy looking girls and a few really bitchy looking girls. As for the latter, there was a duo of a brunette and a blonde. The blonde was just not nice. She always had this look on her face that kind of said, "all of you guys could be standing here on fire and I could have a bucket of water in my hands and I wouldn't help you." She was the kind of girl who would take two mats for herself when the instructor would specifically say, "We ran out of mats, is anyone using two?" And she would sit there with her big ass on two mats and never make any attempt to give one to someone who would end up using their towel instead. (I know this b/c I witnessed her first hand depositing two mats back on the rack at the end of class; trust me she wasn't picking up someone else's to be a good Samaritan either.)

During our boot camp class there would be times when we would have to pass a weight or a bar to the next person in class. Most people would do it with some type of exchange like, "thanks!" and "no problem!" or "you're welcome!". Not her. She would shove her big arm out and extend the weight towards you as if to say, "You better grab this bitch because I'm about to let go, and if it hits the floor, it sure ain't my fault!" The brunette was just her sidekick. I never actually heard her say anything mean or act rude towards anyone. She was guilty by association.

A few weeks ago I had a doctor appointment with my primary care physician. I never actually see the doctor, I just go to the physician's assistant. After getting the blood work portion done I was told to sit in the waiting room because Amanda was running behind schedule. As I cleaned out my Gmail inbox I heard a voice call my name. I stood up, grabbed my purse and started walking toward the door. As I made eye contact with the person holding the door and my chart, I had to do a double take. Was I seeing things because I hadn't eaten in 12 hours? Or was the girl that I was walking towards the brunette from the booty camp clique? I took a few more steps, squinted and realized it was her. One of the booty camp bitches was my PA? How did this happen? I've been going to my doctor for years and have never seen her in here before.

Apparently, I had though. She did my last appointment in 2010 turns out. Somehow the connection was never made at the gym. Maybe it was the lack of a white jacket and stethoscope?

I followed her back to the exam room and took a seat. She didn't recognize me, or did she? We exchanged the normal hellos and she started in with the routine questions. It was somewhere between asking if I was taking any new medications and if I had any surgeries in the past year where I just erupted and said, "You go to the WSC around the corner on the Connecticut, right?" She was like, "I thought you looked really familiar. You're in my boot camp class." We chatted about the class, the instructor and how we were looking to do something different over the summer to change things up. I quickly realized, this girl is not a bitch, in fact, she's actually really nice.

Then my mind started racing as I thought about what the rest of the exam entailed. She's going to see me, like almost naked. I wasn't sure how I felt about booty camp cliquester knowing what I look like without a top on. But then I rationalized, she can see me without a top on in the locker room just as easily, if not easier. She's a professional and this is a doctor's office so I just needed to relax and get through this general physical. I admit that laying there on the table as she did the EKG and I was completely exposed on the top didn't really make me comfortable. She told me some funny stories about our booty camp instructor so that helped pass the time. Before I knew it I was walking out the door and heading back to work. All the while thinking, this is definitely going in the blog.

The lesson I learned here in both of these stories is that the world is very small. You never know if that guy who delivers your FedEx packages at work may turn out to be your friend's new boyfriend. The person on the elevator could be a VP from corporate that you never met before and that person you flipped a bird to could be your boss's father. Everyone is someone. The other lesson learned it that it never pays to judge people by the company they keep. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds and clearly I was guilty of doing it. Sometimes our friends act like douche bags and we can't control their behavior. But that doesn't mean we should be labeled or blamed for their actions.

I'm passing this lesson on because I think it's worth repeating and publicizing and I hope it prevents someone from making the same mistake. The older we get the wiser we get.




"Life isn't about learning to climb the hill in front of us, it's about learning to navigate the entire mountain range" -Mw