The past few months, I have had to force myself to be sociable. I'm definitely trending toward a cloistered hermit-like existence. Not that I'm becoming misanthropic, I just seem to have less and less energy for "fun" stuff anymore. Crazy thing is that when I muster up the energy and force myself to get out of the house I never regret it. Tonight was a perfect example.
I'm in Orlando, for a work conference in the Land of The Mouse. I'm staying at one of the Disney hotels which is very nice in That Disney Way. I had to work booth duty all day. Standing on my feet. trying to make eye contact with passers-by and lure them into seeing my demo. Exhausting. So as soon as I could I got the hell out of there. I didn't go to any of the happy hour mixers, etc. I took the shuttle back to my hotel. Ate a quick bite of dinner and retreated to the nice quietness of my room.
Funny thing about a place like this is that even though my room is very quiet I know that there are people out there laughing and having fun and visiting with each other. As I sat in my quiet room I was nonetheless acutely aware that I'm not out there doing the same and I told myself that I should.
Around 10:00 I resolved to go out and talk to someone. So I walked around the resort for a while. But couldn't force myself to go to one of the bars or any of the other usual socializing places. Just couldn't do it. I decided to head back to my room. I happened to be walking by a convenience store here at the resort and decided to duck in and buy a hideously over-priced Diet Coke. In a Disney resort everything is neatly stacked and safely packaged and clearly tagged with its insane price. So when I got to the check out counter the plate of banana bread stuck out like a sore thumb.
The register was staffed by a middle aged woman. She had a Disney name tag on just like every cast member. I'm not going to mention her name in order to protect her. But I will mention that her name tag also said that she was from a country in South America. Just in front of her register was a dinner plate. Not a nice resort-theme-consistent basket or crate like everything else in the store. It was a plain old dinner plate, the kind you might find in a middle aged woman's kitchen. On the plate were slices of an obviously home-made bread of some sort. Due to the non-homogeneity of the slices and wild variance in slice widths, you could tell right away that this did not come from any bread making factory and was not sliced by an automated bread machine. Likewise, each slice was erratically wrapped in some sort of clear plastic food wrap. No price tags on them. The bread was just so far out of character with the rest of the store that I knew immediately that it was home made by the woman running the register.
My curiosity piqued by this unexpected display of humanity, I asked her what kind of bread it was, and she told me in a thick Hispanic accent that it was banana bread. There was something in the tone of her voice that added a bit of postscript to the words that implied it was a banana bread recipe that had been in her family for a very long time. All of a sudden, I felt like chatting. So I asked her what all was in it and what kind of nuts it had etc etc. I deliberately did NOT ask her if she made it. By this point I'd developed a theory that she'd brought this banana bread in from home and was trying to make a few extra bucks on the side. Then I asked her how much, and she told me $3.00. And she asked me if I'd like a piece. I told her I better not but that it looked delicious. So she rang up my two diet cokes and my two granny smith apples and I paid her.
She grabbed a paper sack and put my Diet Coke and Apples in it and then smooth as day, without any sneakiness or any discernible worry, she picked up a slice of the Banana Bread and put it in my bag. She said, "Please, have a bread. It's OK." I thanked her and told her it was very kind.
When I got back to my room I dove into the banana bread, granny smith apples and diets be damned. I don't even like banana bread very much, but that slice tasted really good.
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