I just had the best conversation. Probably one of the nicest i've had with a man in a really long time.
He's 77 years old and i met him at PJs Coffee.
I have a canvas bag which reads, "wherever i am is centerstage" and this man commented on it as i was sitting down at a table near him. He asked if i was an actor and we started talking about theatre and about opera- how american musicals are just as much operas as the traditional French and Italian ones but don't get the same credit. He mentioned Mozart and Germans lacking credibility as well. Then he told me about his time in the war- apparently he was some kind of military police inteligence officer or something but he also performed with a group with the USO. He was stationed in Japan and other places and taught American as a Second Language. He and his wife were married in the mid-50s and lived around Bayou St John. He told me about all the anti-bellum houses over there and about the Creoles. He talked about Marc Morial's father working for Sears-Robuck before people of color were alowed to do so and how he rode in the front of the streetcar but no one told him anything.
My friend once pulled a gun on a man who was abusing his wife and commanded off-duty Marines to apprehend another man beating up his wife at a Wal-Mart.
He toldme the history of Zydeco (something about greenbeans- haricot- without salt) and how he's had both knees replaced by a doctor who works for the Saints. When he told me that its been almost a year since his wife "went home to wait for me" i almost started crying right there. My maw-maw passed away in January and i kept picturing my paw-paw at the funeral. I should visit him more.
I love my paw-paw and wouldn't trade him for anything but i wish he had more stories.
The man i met today was full of all sorts of interesting tales to tell. He'd been all over the world and was obviously well-read. My paw-paw isn't quite as entertaining- then again, he's had 28 years to tell me the stories that this man (who's name i didn't catch) had only an hour to do.
Other people in the coffee shop would periodically look over at me- wondering if they should rescue me from what was obviously a stranger babbling on.
I was glad that no one interviened though.
As he left, he thanked me for our chat. He said that he'd just come from making arrangements that morning for the one year anniversary of his wife's passing and was feeling sort of blue. He said he enjoyed the conversation we'd had.
Fighting back tears again (old people always make me cry!) i realized i really enjoyed it too.

After seeing "Julie and Julia" last week, i've been inspired to take up blogging again. For a while i was posting blogs on my myspace account but i stopped for some reason and then (like everybody else) pretty much stopped using myspace anyway.

Well below is the first couple paragraphs of something i've written about my experiences earlier this summer:

There are two types of people: pill people and booze people. I am not a pill person.

That isn’t to say that I’m an alcoholic, either. I am quite simply, a New Orleanian.

What is a booze person to do then when liquor is no longer their friend and pills are not optional?

Turn a vice into a virtue.

It all started in the beginning of May 2009. I was 27 years old and living a content life balanced with work and social activities. And then I started to not feel like myself. I was tired and nauseated all the time and had become somewhat irritable. A friend of mine commented that my skin was beginning to look off color and the whites of my eyes had turned yellow. The following day at work, a co-worker concurred that I appeared jaundice.

I was sent to see a doctor who assigned me the unnerving task of peeing in a cup. Forty-five minutes and eight “ma’am, are you okay?”s later, I was still unable to produce the requested urine sample. The nurse informed me she’d simply draw some blood. At this point, I regressed a full twenty years and broke down in the doctor’s office. The temper tantrum I threw in that office did not seem to distract the nurse as she insisted on drawing my blood between my sobbing and convulsing. In an attempt to calm myself down, I sung as loudly as I could to the song playing on the radio. Sadly, even the world’s most committed, albeit bad, version of a Bon Jovi song wasn’t enough to prevent an eggplant colored bruise from almost immediately appearing on my arm.

Assaulted by a sharp object and traumatized, I was then informed they would still need my urine sample. Twenty minutes later, I managed to produce.

Thinking my humiliation was over, I finally steadied myself. Then the doctor informed me she would like to order more tests. I was sent across town to an outpatient clinic and had an ultrasound done on my stomach area. Insisting I wasn’t pregnant, the technician advised she was looking at my liver and pancreas. The ultrasound wasn’t pleasant but it could have been worse. After it was over, I was allowed to go home. I’d suffered enough for one day.