Men First!

Scene: Tenleytown Metro Station, Washington D.C., mid-August 2014
Players: Myself and a 82 year old woman

As frequent DC Metro riders well know, one of the prized experiences when arriving at the station is timing your arrival with the arrival of the elevator. If you catch the elevator down, it can save a couple of minutes off of your trip. Not a huge deal, but when you're rushing home, saving time is all that matters in your life.

So, on this day as I am preparing to take the escalator down into the Metro, I see the elevator arrive out of the corner of my eye. I abruptly change course and dash for the door. I am not the only person making this move, so a bottleneck is forming at the door of the elevator. As I'm bounding towards the door I notice that I am on a collision course with an elderly woman. I then stop myself, back up, hold the door with my left arm and invite her to enter ahead of me. Our conversation proceeded this way:

Me: Please, you first.
Granny: No! Men first!
Me: (taken aback but smiling at what I assumed was a funny joke) No. Please. You first.
Granny: Oh no. You're in such a big hurry that you can cut off 82 year old women, especially when they're carrying two bags; you go ahead! You're more important.
Me: Please. Go ahead.

At this point she digs her heels in. It was obvious she was not going to allow me to get what I wanted. I was brought up in the south, mind you. It went against everything I had ever been taught to go in the elevator ahead of this woman. While this is going on,you'll remember, lots of impatient would-be elevator riders are watching this scene unfold in exhausted disbelief. So I then decided that all I could do was turn around and head down the escalator. I assume granny got on the elevator once I left, but I can never know for sure.

I have reflected on this moment often since then. Did I do something to earn her ire? Was I rude or inconsiderate somehow? Why was she so intent on shaming me? I will wonder about this for all time.

I'm sure that she is a wonderful old women who has done many admirable things with lots of people in her life that love her. But this was her 5-second life, and "crazy elevator lady" is all she'll ever be to me.

Good Burgers (this is not a Kenan and Kel reference)

This was yesterday. I'm frequenting a local hamburger/hot dog/fries restaurant, waiting on a covered patio for my lunch order to be brought out to me. ("Another post about your lunch, Jon? Do we officially have a lunch motif?" you ask. "Hush," I say.) Jack and I are corresponding on Messenger about his idea for this blog. As they so often do, the comedy gods decide they're going to give me material.

A crowd of 8-10 middle school students with a chaperone in tow approach the counter. The project manager / ringleader of the students says something robotic along the lines of, "We are from Julia Landon Preparatory School, and we're doing a scouting tour of the businesses in our neighborhood." The cashier takes this in stride beautifully and goes through the restaurant's hours and menu with them.

My first thought was, "Hey, I went to that school too... of course, it didn't have a fancy name when I went there." My second thought was, "Oh boy, the cashier is going to take a picture of them. I should probably move."

The cashier has corralled all of the kids in front of the restaurant; all of the kids are now holding the restaurant's sign (the kind you see people getting paid $8/hour to spin while dancing obnoxiously). To encourage decent facial expressions among the pre-teen set, the cashier prompts them with the following:

"On the count of 3, you're gonna say 'Good burgers'!"

As soon as I hear this, I have to turn my back to the scene because I'm trying very hard not to laugh. Not at the kids or the cashier, mind you, but because of all the options she had available to get them to say, she went with "Good burgers".

When "Cheeseburgers" was sitting right there!

...there was Publix.

July 7, 2014. An innocuous Publix parking lot at lunchtime, in the middle of the rush. I'm walking to my sensible Japanese hybrid with a Boar's Head turkey sub in hand. From a row of cars over, a question floats to my ear from a conversation between an attractive girl and a guy... well, a guy that looks and acts a lot like me. That is to say, equal parts rangy and awkward. The question?

"You shop at Publix, too?"

I say all that to say this: I've struggled with small talk all my life. I've started some really stupid weather-related conversations in the interest of not staring blankly at whoever is standing across from me. This question rocked me to my core, because I've been there dozens of times. Attractive girl! Scan surroundings for conversation material! Um, Publix - you shop at Publix, too? It was tough to watch as a third party, but I know that it gets better. Eventually. Theoretically.

I just wanted to give the guy a hug.

In the Beginning...

So, the idea for this blog came to me one day after hearing the following exchange.

Scene: Jacksonville Beach, approximately one block from the ocean, sometime in May 2014.
Players: 2 guys and 1 girl riding bikes together.

Girl: I love biking down this back-road, the flowers smell so pretty this time of year.
Guy 1: (In a mocking tone typically reserved for "yo mama" jokes) You're a back-road.
Girl: Shut-up!

I had a nice chuckle, then they passed by me and I'll never see them again. All I will ever know about them is that 5 second conversation I overheard that day. It then occurred to me that our lives are filled with interactions like this. People that, for all intents and purposes, only exist for 5 seconds or so and exist no more. Hence: 5-second lives.

I thought that there needed to be a place where those interactions were captured and not lost to oblivion. So, that's it. Feel free to share any stories you have. I'll be happy to pass them along. Hopefully this can grow into a fun little community that shares smiles with one another. The world needs more of that.