{#777 “I shouldn’t have consumed that water from Saturn”} My name is Amy Farrah Fowler Cooper. I married the world famous string physicist Sheldon Cooper in a small ceremony five years ago, and to date, this has been my greatest accomplishment. Admittedly, this is a fairly disparaging state of affairs, as I should be as famous as he is for my work in neuro-biology. But I’m not. So, one day about four years ago, Rajesh came to me bragging about how they were putting a man on Saturn like they had back in the sixties with the moon. Howard was designing a top-secret Rover for it. Howard would not be going, seeing as how the one fiasco in space nearly did him in. Of course, the excitement was palatable among our little group. And now we await the return of our cadet and all the spoils from deep space nine. Rocks for the geology lab. Some dirt for the ecologists. And data for everyone! Except me. I could study the brains of the astronauts, but I didn’t expect to find anything different than I ever had before. Maybe some endorphins from going where no man had ever gone before, pardon the pun, but no Earth shattering evidence of anything. I was bemoaning my woes to Sheldon that evening over dinner when he said in that offhand way he has with actual interesting information (instead of his usual tedious fact sharing…
I can only think of one story I want to tell. There’s this local color here in the mountains. Fly fisherman extraordinaire; he’s been featured on the Heartland Series several times. Everyone knows him for his singin’, and his late daddy for his preachin’. He’s an excavator by trade, but a big cut up at heart. To know him truly is to love him. So one day, I’m standing at my post behind the counter at the Co-op and he ambles up with his long legged stride. I don’t know how he finds overalls to fit. Toothpick in his mouth, he says to me, “How ya doin’ girl?” Same as always. I grin. “Just fine, Mr. Ball. And how are you today?” “Oh, I’m a-gittin’ by. I been at the hospital a-visitin’.” “Oh no, I hope whoever it is gets well! The hospital is no place to be.” “You’re tellin’ me!” As always, a smile was playing on his lips and his eyes twinkled. I had no doubt he had brightened the day of whoever it was he went to see, just as he always brightens mine. “I got in the elevator, and it was busy, you know. Lotta people sick this time of year. Anyway, there was seven or eight of us in there, and…
{#411 The story you shouldn’t have overheard on the bus} I was looking at their shoes and thinking they didn’t belong. I admit, I judge people by their footwear. I can’t help it, I profile. Forrest was right, you can tell a lot about people by looking at their shoes. Where they are headed, where they’d been. And these Christian Louboutin’s did NOT belong on a scuzzy old city bus past midnight, or any other time. You’ll find duct taped running shoes on the bus. Or polished-within-an-inch-of-their-life secondhand oxfords. Or sensible thick soled lunchlady shoes. People eking their way through life, working two jobs in order to scrape by. But never Louboutin’s. Maybe some knockoffs on a hooker, some that she’d painted the soles red to fool no one. Because the people who knew what Louboutin’s were knew they weren’t gonna find ’em on a girl painted up like a brazen hussy at two o’clock in the afternoon. But as I was saying, it wasn’t two o’clock in the afternoon. It was two in the morning and I sat very still in my muddy Redwing work boots, pretending to look at my phone but really watching a guy on the aisle two rows up on the right, silently nodding along to his iPod music. Or maybe he…