Did I mention the weather in Greensboro? Did I mention that it was 117 degrees? And, unusually for North Carolina in July, it was quite humid too. That is some oppressive heat. But, you know, it wasn’t a dry heat.
Nice hotel, but too crowded, and I’ve never had further to walk from the nearest door to the front desk. It was a five minute walk, at least. Odd. But the walk from the closest parking space to the closest door was even further—literally, it had to be twice as far as the next-farthest I’ve ever had to walk at a hotel before. And did I mention it was a tad on the warm side?
Actually, after I dropped Top Management off and went find parking, I saw an empty space right next to the hotel. Talk about luck! But there were a couple of women with suitcases standing in the spot, just chatting, apparently having just gotten out of the car parked in the next spot. I waited a moment for them to notice me and make room, but they didn’t. And then I realized that it was intentional—they were ignoring me. But why? I’m so damn charming! Didn’t make sense. Then I realized they were actually saving the parking space for someone.
I thought very briefly of making an issue of it, but decided not to because I was in such a great mood and that would have put a damper on it. Besides, what’s the big deal? So I have to walk ten spaces further. No big whoop.
Well, as it turns out, I had to walk about a hundred and fifty spaces further, making me sort of regret my foolish attempt at staking out the high ground. And the more I thought about it, the more astonished I became. I mean, can you do that? Stand in a parking space to save it for someone? Is that "done"? I’d never heard of it before, other than Manhattan store owners putting orange cones in the space in front of their store so the delivery truck would have someplace to unload. Can you do that in a packed parking lot, save someone a space? It seemed so incredibly uncool to me, but then I don’t get out much.
It was like when Top Management and I went to see The Two Towers on opening day. Got there early, got our drinks, our popcorn and went to find seats. Well, there were six teenagers who’d staked out, I kid you not, the middle three rows of the entire theatre—THE prime seats. They’d put a coat across three chairs then sit in another seat with each of their arms out on yet another, and then they’d have another coat on their other side across three more seats, and in this way each kid was able to save nine seats. So two kids per row, taking up three entire rows. And where were all their friends? Out in the lobby playing video games.
These hotel women were sorta like that. Only they didn’t have the excuse of not being fifteen. They should have known better. And I’m willing to bet that, deep down, they did.
So later we scoped out the parking situation for the concert and drove around UNCG, Top Management’s old stomping grounds. Everyone was gone from the writing program where she got her master’s degree—although we did manage to catch up with several of them the next day, including Jim, the wonderful head of her program and who’s gotta have a picture in his attic that’s aging. So then we went to eat and afterwards stopped by a bar where a bunch of our fellow Bruce fans were congregating, and that was a ton of fun even for a hermit such as myself. Who the hell knew that talking to new people could be enjoyable? What a concept. Do other people know of this idea?
Not quite as much fun but still memorable was a sign we passed on the main route through Greensboro: House of Barber. Now, I fully admit that I’ve never thought of what the larger realm of haircuttering is called, but I guess I would have thought that a school which trains barbers was called something more like House of Barbering. Or House of Barberity. Hmm. Maybe not. House of Barbery? House of How to Cut Hair. I dunno. I even briefly toyed with the idea that it was, in fact, not actually a place where you learn to cut hair but a place which belonged to an elephant. Then I realized that would have been the House of Babar.
Oh so minor. And yet House of Barber has popped into my head unbidden several times a day for the past five days. This was how people in Firestarter knew the end was nigh.
Oh, and we saw Bruce Springsteen in concert. And that was pretty cool.
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