Branded and stranded

Okay, so not really. But they did physically put on our wrists these neon green tags, like you get in the hospital, with the "NYS BAR EXAM VALID 2 DAYS - DO NOT REMOVE" on them, and for 2 days, it was the hottest accessory in Albany. It did feel a little like being marked.

The stranded part -- also not really. But it felt like it when I got back to the fabulous Days Inn at SUNY Albany and the desk clerk called for a cab and they said 20 minutes and my flight was in an hour and a half and I wasn't sure if I could get my broken suitcase into checked luggage anyway. I even considered asking some perfect strangers who were loading up a car and clearly headed to the airport if they'd take me. But I didn't, and a cab did show up, and at the airport a nice United Airlines employee smiled and was really pleasant and taped up my suitcase and my faith in humanity and the world was restored after two days of bar-ing. It was slightly amazed when I got to the plane and was requested to move to the back to fix a weight distribution problem (it was a pretty small plane, but still), but it got restored again when I got to Dulles (a very round-about flight back to Crimson City due to my making reservations at the last minute) and boarded the flight and found that I was in fucking first class, dude, seated next to a very handsome stranger (who looked at me as if I were an alien and then closed his eyes and fell asleep, but he was still pretty to look at). That was the most relaxing hour I'd had in weeks. I reclined in my plush, spacious seat. I watched Friday Night Lights (yep, as good as you've heard it was). I really didn't want to land.

People in Albany were pretty dang nice. I forget that the hard shell we all adopt in the big cities is just a shell, and most Americans are at heart friendly, well-meaning folk. Take the server at the salad bar I went to for lunch yesterday. He smiled and asked how the test was going, and said, "It's almost over! You can do it!" while assembling my salad. Or take the cabbie on the way back from the airport last night here in Crimson City. I was exhausted and highly stressed and was very short in my replies to his well-meaning attempts to chat, and seeing that I was exhausted and highly stressed, he (1) shut up, and (2) when dropping me off, took my ragged, ruined suitcase (it had a hard trip, and was bleeding Barbri books when I got it off the carousel) up the stairs right to the front door.

Looking for a table to sit at, I noticed a periodical printed on pink paper, and wanting something to read and think about besides law, I sat at that table. I realized in short order that it was a horseracing sheet after I sat down, and a few minutes later a fat, ruddy gent with white hair said genially, "You don't want to read that, do you?" I shrugged and said, "Well, I'll read it. Something to do during lunch."

A few minutes later, it came out that it was his paper that I had unintentionally appropriated, and after I apologized, it came out that he had a couple horses in the race that day, the opening day at Saratoga Springs. After a few more minutes, it came out that he actually owned the restaurant, and that the whole family was helping to run it, including his grandson at the salad bar and another grandson, no more than 10 years old from the looks of him, running between kitchen and bar for various types of greens, and his son behind the register, where he'd been running the restaurant ever since he got laid off from his flight attendant job after 9/11. And a few more minutes after that, it came out that his family was from Tuscany originally, and had always been in food and in construction, and that he worked in construction, but always had an interest in food too, and still insisted on eating only fish on Christmas Eve because that's the way he was brought up, and since he himself went down to Brooklyn every year and bought 60 pounds of fish for Christmas Eve and cooked it all up, no one complained too much. I asked him the names of his horses and his favorite construction machines, and he grinned when I said it looked like fun, working those big cranes, and said it was fun, a lot of fun.

It was a lovely interaction to have, and reminded me that the thing I find the most interesting in the world is people's stories.