Category Archives: day in the life

I don’t drink, as a rule. Alcohol just doesn’t do much for me. I also don’t drive much. I’ve lived the majority of my life in a smallish town where you can get anywhere important by walking less than a mile. For about twelve of my fifteen years living here, I’ve never even owned a car.

This, combined with a tendency toward losing things, mean that I rarely carry a photo ID on my person.

These are the things you need to understand if you’re going to appreciate this story.

I was in the grocery store buying food because I had company coming over. A few of the students I have come to know well in the last couple years are graduating soon. One of the best of these is leaving this Sunday. She and one other particularly bright and shining student have been good friends to me this last year. We go to each other’s houses for dinner, watch movies, and talk honest talk into the late hours of night. We are comfortable and loving and non-judgmental with each other. They are graduating and moving on with their lives, and I am staying here and moving on with mine.

This, I think, will be what makes me leave my job as a teacher eventually. Not the low pay, or the high workload, or lack of professional respect because I don’t have enough letters behind my name. Those things are familiar and bearable, like the smell of the papermill when the wind blows from the south. But good friends are rare to me, and I have no knack for letting go of people I care about. I can’t imagine what will happen to me if this happens every couple years for the next decade.

But there will be plenty of time for me to be melancholy when they are gone. So now I’m simply glad of their company when I can get it, and I’m trying to catch as much quality time with them as I can before they leave.

Hence the grocery store. This is a purely recreational shopping run. My house is already stocked with everything I need to survive: ramen and pasta and microwave burritos. I have simple tastes, but I want to be a good host. So I buy cherries and apples and cheese and bread. I buy pistachios and chocolate and soy ice cream for the friend who has a lactose intolerance.

Then I think to buy some wine. My friends enjoy wine and I enjoy being a good host. I also occasionally like to try a glass of wine, like a child playing dress-up. It’s fun for me because when I drink wine I get to pretend that I’m an adult.

So I go to the liquor section and browse around. My knowledge of wine could very easily be written entire onto the palm of my hand, so my choices are based on educated guessery and how cool the bottle looks. I pick out a swirly bottle and something with Asti on the label, because I’m pretty sure that means sweet. I like sweet.

When I get into the checkout line, I realize I don’t have my ID on me. This usually ends up being an issue whenever I get it into my head to buy liquor. Sure, I look like I’m of age, but looks don’t count for much. Once, when I was 26, I had an undercover policeman pull me out of a liquor store and ask to see my license. When I showed it to him, he raised a surprised eyebrow and shrugged, vaguely apologetic. “You weren’t acting like you were old enough to be in there,” he said. I took it as a complement.

So there I am in the grocery line with booze and no ID. I’ve been in this situation before. As I’ve mentioned, I rarely carry one. I never think of it until I get into the checkout line carrying a bottle.

I have a number of strategies for dealing with this. Normally I just play it cool, hoping that if I act like I buy booze all the time, they’ll just let me through and not ask any questions.

This is my first line of defense, and it works about half the time.

When people ask to see my ID, it’s usually all over. At that point my strategy varies depending on what mood I’m in. If the booze was an impulse buy, I usually just put it back. If I’m feeling particularly cussed, I’ll argue. This doesn’t work, but I do usually achieve a vague moral victory wherein I get the teller to say something along the lines of, “I’m only following orders.”

Once, when somebody asked to see my ID I just raised an eyebrow and gave the teller a look. It was a look that said, “Come on. Just look at me. Witness my full and manly beard. I’m not some punk kid buying a bottle of strawberry Boone’s Farm. I’m an adult.” She gave me a sheepish, apologetic grin, and scanned my bottle of Baileys.

I smiled and said, “Thanks.” But inside I was jumping up and down thinking, “Ha! I fooled you! I really am a punk kid! And I have a bottle of strawberry Boone’s Farm at home in my fridge!”

So, again, I’m in the grocery line, running through my options and trying to pick my best strategy. I get to the front of the line, and I’m getting ready to try the raised eyebrow thing again, when the teller looks at me and says, “So when is book two coming out?” She scans my bottles without asking for any sort of ID.

I try to play it cool and say something suave about my revisions. But the truth is, I’m thrown by this. I’m not used to it. In the last month I’ve had people come up to me in at the DMV, at Best Buy, at the video rental place, and at the local ice cream shop (twice).

I know it’s just a local phenomenon. Stevens Point is pretty small, and there have been a handful of “Local Boy Does Good” articles in the papers with unflattering but rather accurate pictures of me. Once you know what I look like, I’m easy to recognize. Generally speaking I look like a Russian dictator, or a Harry Potter character. Or a homeless guy. Or a Muppet.

That’s all. I just wanted to share my surreal moment with you all. As with all my stories, I’ve wandered, but we do have an ending. This is the good place to stop if you want a happy one. There, at the store, things end with me feeling famous and cool, though somewhat flustered and uncomfortable. Possibly the first time in my life I’ve ever had anything resembling a fame-related perk.

If you keep following the story later into the night, the ending is bittersweet. A nice evening. Talk. Food. Wine. But it’s the last evening, and the three of us know it.

Keep going and it the story ends dark. All stories do if you follow them long enough. One friend leaves sooner, the other later. We promise to stay in touch, but we don’t, because that is the way of things. We’ll try e-mail, but it won’t be the same. Distance doesn’t allow for intimacy. You can’t chat over e-mail. Not really. You can’t drink wine. Or hug. Or pretend to be grown-ups. Or pretend to be kids. They won’t call when they’re bored, and we won’t get together to watch movies and give each other backrubs. They won’t come over and ask for advice and bitch about the transient, incompetent men in their lives. I won’t be able to lay on the couch with my head in someone’s lap and cry because I miss my mom.

Early on it will be hard, and the absent ache of them will be constant, impossible to ignore as a missing tooth. It will get easier, because that is the way of things. Moving on is what people do. We’re designed for it. We’ll forget the feel of it, the closeness of dimly lit conversations, the smell of each other. In time we’ll only remember each other in a vague, colorless way. Then even that will fade, and we won’t realize that anything is missing from our lives at all.

Goodnight all,

pat