People I admire, uh, like, uh tolerate

David Sherman

In the course of my daily encounters, city or rural, my greying hair or reduction of same, corresponds to my increasing affection for my fellow man, especially those too young to know anything. Last doctor I saw was 32, she said. She looked 25 and everything she told me I took with a shaker of salt and a pepper mill. But she did say I would live so I became fond of her.

Of course, decades ago, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I knew everything. It took 50 more years to realize how dumb I really was. Or maybe I’m in my dotage, suffering the creeping diminishment of mental faculties, along with fearing the decline in my ability to get to a washroom on time.

With the decline in about everything comes a welcome don’t-give-a-shit attitude. I suffer fools gladly, as well as the overbearing, the self-absorbed, the vacuous – including myself – the addicted and alcoholic (not so gladly) and the run-of-the-mill psychotic as well as the one in the mirror.

But, time to come clean. Some people I really enjoy. Intensely. Can’t live without. They’re as welcome as the hair that has moved from my head to blossoming out my ears. Below are a few of those who make every day a joy.

• The indifferent supermarket cashier who insists you know her life is torture, needing sympathy in return for your pork chops. Who needs pleasure meal planning as you wheel through the aisles – shopping carts double as walkers to hide an attack of roving arthritis – when you can show empathy for the woman monotonously scanning the contents of your diet. Her right shoulder is shot and her right arm has stretched three feet from scanning 10,000 objects a day with only time for a deep breath between shoppers. She masks her disdain for her job and you, who, after all, is her job, by saying hello as she thinks, “Not more fuckin’ canned tomatoes. Bloody weekly specials.” You say hello back but she’s eyeing the 10 lbs of potatoes coming at her on the merciless conveyor belt. OI say, “Hello, how are you?” right back but she’s tuned me out, wishes I would starve so she could drift off to her real life -- her phone.

• The fuming, aggressive, serve and protect cop who seethes at you for driving 15 kms over the limit or rolling through a stop, asks for your papers as he dreams of the good old Gestapo. He takes your welfare and those of fellow motorists to heart and your disregard of the laws of the road pains him. He hates this part of his job as much as you hate paying the freight. He wants to be Marlowe, Bosch or Gamache, if he reads anything other than Guns are Us or Mein Kampf. He writes a ticket, pondering if he could get away with shooting you in the head but the paperwork is a drag and he might get suspended. He considers handcuffing you to your steering wheel and leaving you there but you’d still be alive to make a complaint which would only increase his aggro. The only alternative is to up the fine and, if you object, you’ll be the one spending a morning in traffic court, losing more money, as he keeps collecting his $50-$55 an hour or $100,000 plus a year, not counting OT. The only way you can make so much money with so little education and get to carry a gun is to rob banks. Protecting, serving and bullying keeps you from prison and is way more fun.

• The man that's left in me can’t help but love the shiny woman at the bakery in her 20s, spilling out of a tight black top, tights so tight you can tell what brand of underwear she isn’t wearing. She treats me like her great-grandfather spending an hour away from his bed in palliative care. To her and her cherished bosom, you are neither man nor human, just fingers to press 20 per cent tip on the card reader. She has to make a living. Rents and bars and gas are expensive and it’s only right we subsidize it, rather than her employer. That well-practiced smile disappears as soon as she turns her back, kept in reserve for the next victim. Excess smiling might crease the face, distract from the cleavage.

• The sports freak. How can you not love a male for whom sports is life, whose sole topic of conversation and activity is watching sports on TV? Hence, he knows who played left wing for the Red Wings in 1975 as well as knowing best how each position of every sport should be played. He’s been watching for decades and therefore knows more about the sport than those who have played since the age of two. Yes, despite his expanding girth from growing roots in front of a TV, he smarter about sports than players, coaches, managers, announcers. Any suggestion pros in the business might know a tad more than he is ridiculed. His admirable sports expertise carries over into much of life where he’s absorbed perfection while planted in his arm chair the way the rest of us absorb oxygen. He’s a role model for all of us yearning to be a potato.

• Thank you to the food-as-poison fanatics. They blessedly warn us almost all food is deadly, with the exception of brown lentils on brown rice. If it’s fruit or vegetables, it’s undoubtedly dosed with carcinogenic pesticides which will kill or eat your liver. Only organic will do, though, in reality, no food is 100-per-cent organic. Somewhere along the way from seed to table it comes into contact with some soil or container that is not pristine. There are no vestal virgins in the produce section. If eating meat or poultry or fish – anything that once moved – is eaten, its heritage must be documented and certified and be fat and flavour free. Even a sprinkle of salt’ll kill you. Sugar – Gasp!!! A teaspoon in coffee or tea, organic, of course, will eat your liver and kidneys and send you straight to hell, if the coffee doesn’t do it first. Food is not to be enjoyed, it’s to be suffered through, like reading the news.

• Galloping internet, phone and cable costs. Most expensive in their world and it has nothing to do with how Bell et al have a near-stranglehold on cell towers. They tell us it’s proof of the grandeur and breadth of the country, the magnificence of our “A mari usque ad mare,” Latin for we’ll shaft you from sea to sea. Bell invented the phone, Watson came when he was needed, and should be remunerated generously for eternity. And cable companies, including Bell, know many are plugged into pro sports, binge-watching Netflix, streaming films. We’re addicts and they’re the dealers and have a right to charge us the going rate for whatever the drug of the month is going for. And how can you not love those surprises, finding your bill has suddenly jumped $100 a month? Even better you get to spend anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour on hold listening to bad music before an agent in Botswana will give you an amazing “loyalty” deal, cutting your bill in half or less until the next surprise.

What’s not to love?