Yesterday morning I drove for 20 minutes down a major highway to a small, rural town. My business there was to hang up a poster of an upcoming fundraising event. As I pulled into the wide, snowy parking lot next to the small store, I noticed several pick-up trucks. Uh oh. Instinctively I sensed that I was about to walk into a man-domain. “Oh well, “ I thought, psyching myself up to walk into the building. “I’ve driven all the way down here and I’ve got to get this up…I can do it,” and I pushed open the heavy glass and metal door to step inside. It may come as a surprise that an extrovert like me would have any qualms with this scenario…and maybe my more shy friends would be secretly exultant. Well it was worse than I anticipated – there, facing the door, were three chairs in a row with three middle-aged men sitting there, knees apart, drinking their coffee. I just about laughed out loud as they abruptly stopped their conversation to figure me out. Not being a “local,” I’m sure they wondered about me. And as I turned to my left to ask the clerk permission to hang up my poster, no doubt I got the body scan. Argh.
Naturally the bulletin board was behind the jury. So I sweetly asked if they would excuse me while I slid between two chairs to the wall above the freezer case. As I fastened the poster to the bulletin board, conversation resumed and “Mr. Important” began a litany of petty grievances about people who run around on the slippery roads in a snowstorm and then bellyache about the lack of proper sanding. He backed up his sanding job with a statistic of how much sand it took per so many miles…inarticulate sounds of agreement issued from the other two men. I squeezed back through the chairs and made for the door, thanking the blonde gal thumbing through a magazine behind the counter. I wonder if they bothered to look at my poster?
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