Seriously. Real Names and Everything.

I never used to be one of those people who hated Mondays and looooonged for the end of the workweek. This was probably due in large part to the fact that during college, Fridays just meant that I would spend the entirety of the following day studying, without any of those troublesome interruptions like “class” and “work.” (For the record, I probably did not need to be studying that hard. I was a little bit intense in college.)

Anyway, now that I am a Working Girl (in the strictly non-prostitute sense of the term), I’m starting to understand the whole mentality that rates days according to a strict hierarchy. For example, there is a stark contrast between Sunday and Friday, which basically boils down to: one is followed by a workday, the other is not. And Monday, they say, is particularly bad because it’s preceded by two days of Getting Totally Crunk (or, you know, reading books and going on walks and stuff) and is therefore a harsher reminder of the reality of work than any other weekday morning. Since I’m still figuring out the balance of my new job, and since I’m rawther prone to stress anyway, Monday mornings can tend to be a little bit of a downer for me.

Ergo: this story. It happened last weekend but I've been saving it for a Monday morning, because there's nothing like a little bit of uncontrollable laughter to brighten up the beginning of a week. And this story will make you laugh. I promise.

*****

Dial back to last weekend. My best friend from home and her husband (plus her sister and her sister’s fiancé. I’m trying to learn how to leave out extraneous detail when I write but it just seems sort of cruel to pretend they weren’t there) are in town visiting. As I mentioned before, we plan to spend pretty much all day Saturday touring landmarks and monuments, but we do carve out a little bit of time in our sightseeing schedule to eat lunch. (This is a good call—just ask anyone who’s ever been around me when I’ve had low blood sugar.) During tourist season the city is chock full of street vendors selling oatmeal crème pies and dirty water hot dogs but we make a bold move and pick the Corner Bakery on Fourteenth Street instead.

The café is pretty busy, so we look at the menu while we wait, discussing the relative merits of chicken pesto panini and tomato basil soup. When my turn comes, I step up to the counter and find myself facing a friendly twenty-something man with nice but nondescript features. He asks what I’d like and I order a Greek salad, guessing from his accent that he could be Greek himself, or perhaps eastern European of some variety. (I clearly have no expertise in linguistics.) He gives me the cup for my drink and I hand him my credit card. We’re seconds away from passing out of one another’s minds forever, and then!

The cashier (my receipt says his name is Yousif) shakes his head, makes an “I-just-can’t-help-myself” sort of noise in the back of his throat, and says: “I just love your face.” Except with his accent it sounds more like “Eyyye jus love your face.”

He’s smiling, he’s obviously sincere, and it’s an incredibly kind thing to say (I think…), so I smile in return and say “thank you!” To which he responds:

Him: I do. I want to take you hooome and show you to my mah-ther!

My mind, frantically processing: his mother? Did he just say he wants to show me to his mother?

Him, now without a single iota of embarrassment: Eeeeef my mah-ther saw you, she would want to play with you!

Me, sort of taken aback: Like…a baby?

Him, triumphantly: Like a doll!!

*****

Every word of that story is true. You just go on now and try to have a bad Monday.