Napolean’s Hat
Although the New Year had barely been baptized, I had already broken my superficial resolution with a chocolate chip banana cookie as well as my meaningful one with a flood of fearful thoughts anxiously anticipating Monday morning, and the beginning of Winter term. After a month without mandated schedules, a simple weekend threatened me with how much time I didn’t have under a daunting rainstorm shoulding on my insecurities. Rather than torturing myself with my own thoughts, I set out into the gloomy wet Saturday. It was the proper tone for the dictated many rainy days soon to follow setting seasonal affective disorder into full swing. Regardless, graduate school was to resume whether I was ready for it or not. I was not only afraid of my own incompetence as a teacher, but also dreading the tedious paper work and many hoops I was going to have to jump through in order to follow my passion or at least what I recently chosen to represent it. But the theme of the next term wasn’t creativity or revolution, it was obedience and basic skills: two essential tools often overlooked on the path to reaching one’s dreams.
I had just finished ordering one hour digital prints to send off in my late responses of holiday thank-yous and was about to work my way toward the Eugene Public Library to return a much overdue DVD, when a startling shout came from next door, “ WHY AREN’T YOU OPEN BIKE SHOP!!!” The man shouting was a bald elder dressed fairly warm in an old coat beside a tattered bicycle. Again, “OPEN BIKE SHOP,” the sound was scary and angry and I could see people shooting glances and crossing to the other side of the street. As I gathered my things and prepared my umbrella, I hesitated about my next course of action. I wished that I had the confidence and fearlessness to approach the bike shop sergeant and attempt to calm him down. Rather I fell into my usual pattern of fearfulness, plugged myself into my mp3 player, crossed the street, and headed toward the library. A block later, my cold hands made me turn around assuming that I had forgotten my gloves at the UO bookstore. The man was still there and inside the store I could overhear the desk clerk, a young college student, similar to me in appearance and probably in situation, call what seemed to be campus security. “Hi this is Lindsay, from the Digital Duck….Yeah there is some guy outside yelling really loudly…..okay…..Thank You.”
I left the store again, after realizing that no, I hadn’t forgotten my gloves they were in my backpack the whole time…typical. As I was gathering my things under the awning, a middle aged man walked up to me, “Excuse me miss…could you spare 50 cents… it’s pretty important.” I fished 75 cents out of my wallet and handed it over. He thanked me and walked up to a young man, typical in appearance an mannerisms of a college student, and asked him the same thing. I waited around to see how he would respond. The invisible line of “normalcy” between the middle class and the homeless or mentally impaired fascinates me, and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to observe an interaction crossing it. The college kid said he didn’t have any change, and the middle aged man walked on. Then the college student waited around looking at the yelling older man near the bike shop. The sergeant continued to threaten the closed bike shop door. Finally, the college student walked up to him and with the most peaceful voice I had ever heard from a member of the male sex in my age group, spoke to him. The conversation presented itself in mumbles and resonances, but it ended with the two peacefully parting. There I stood, in awe. I wanted so badly to have the confidence then to at least talk to the college student who had chosen such a peacefully resolving course of action. But, instead a comforted myself by promising to write a short story as soon as I returned the DVD and made it home.
As if the Universe was concerned her message was too subtle for a simple college student who had been numbing her brain for a month with television, wine, and hedonistic living, another happenstance followed enriching my story. A few blocks away from the book store, I met a woman at a stop light with a bright yellow duck shaped umbrella. She mumbled something as we crossed the street, so I smiled at her in case she was talking to me. Then, I decided to ask her what she had said.
“Oh, Happy New Year!”
“Oh Thank You! I keep forgetting. Happy New Year!” I started to move faster ahead on the sidewalk, when she began to offer more small talk. So, I responded with, “I like your umbrella.” We then closed our conversation, or so I thought.
A little while later, “What about my hat?” I turned. “Napolean Bonaparte!” I looked at the hat. It was big, black and floppy, pinned in the front with a gold colored broche. “You see, the front is supposed to be the back, but I like it better this way. It keeps the rain off my head.”
“Very nice,” I said. “Did you pin the front on your own?”
“Yep, and once, I went into a store and said ‘I am Napolean and I demand service,’” She replayed her story with an air of confidence and charisma sprinkled with spirited laughter.
“Did it work?” I said in a giggly voice.
“I can’t remember.” She tilted her head a bit, smiled and asked me the usual questions one might ask on first encounter if their intention was to pass time or get to know someone.
“Education! Are you serious? So you get to play with the kids all day. That’s great. I could tell. You have a child-like spirit about you.”
“Well, I guess so. It’s harder than I thought it would be though.”
“Well, you know what it doesn’t matter. You get through those hurdles. Everything is hard you know? You do your passion anyway.”
What? Do your passion. Had I just landed in a Dan Millman novel or a Linkletter film? This is the kind of thing that writers dream about happening so that they can surely get it published only to be rejected for its lack of authenticity.
We were interrupted by the oncoming arrival of a woman over the age of 60 in a motorized wheelchair. The female Socrates with the ducky umbrella, greeted the woman excitedly “ Happy New Year!” I assumed that the two had known each other. A conversation between the two women developed about free events offered throughout the city of Eugene. The woman then began to artfully describe a concert in which the baritone player was beautiful in every sense, “handsome on the inside and out,” she said. “He had this sparkle in his eye and a beautiful soul.”
Socrates turned to me and exclaimed, “See! That’s you! You can find the Zest for life too. That’s passion. He was doing what he loved to do. That’s what’s it about.” She pulled out a green index card with a quote on it by Dan Miller (not to be confused with Dan Millman, although the similarity did tickle my love for synchronicities). The card read:
“ANYTHING IS WORTH TRYING EVEN IF DONE POORLY THE FIRST TIME.” Wow, I thought, how fitting for my mood right now embarking on my next adventure in practicum.
Just then, another pedestrian approached, accompanied by an old bicycle. It was the bike shop sergeant. “LOOK OUT!” he yelled at the woman in the motorized wheel chair, who was already in the middle of figuring out how to orient herself in order to make space on the sidewalk.
“Look out?” she replied, more to us rather than the fast paced man already down the block. “But, I don’t want to look out. I want to look in.” And my fear was easily comforted in a new peaceful energy. It was if my newly acquired company had the power to affect the overturning of my feelings. As the conversation progressed and we parted ways, I made an appointment to meet my female befriended Socrates for next Sunday at 1:00pm. Perhaps, winter term wouldn’t be so bad after all.
