They never laughed at me at the eye doctor’s before.
But now, a year since my last visit, they were ecstatic.
“We looked you up in the obituaries,” said “Leah,” the office manager. “Because so many people have died.”
Our town is still at “high risk” from the Covid-19 virus. Most of the staffers still wear masks. We all live with melancholy memories.
“I didn’t die,” I said sheepishly. “I just was – you know – sad.”
“You weren’t in the obituaries,” Leah said, and then exulted: “I found you in Wikipedia!”
Everyone agreed that was better, and I wondered how many people get lost in unexpected places. Where, for instance, are the “skirt chasers” who used to be everywhere?
And that did make me laugh, remembering the scene in Gunter Grass’s “The Tin Drum.” A fugitive hides under a woman’s skirt and gets her pregnant.
We read that in beginning German class and couldn’t believe what we were reading. Was this a dedicated skirt chaser or what?
Meanwhile – because all of life is a seamless web – Gunter Grass is in Wikipedia.
