Friday, April 6, 2007

I’m Tired Y’all part 2 of 5

Tuesday, thankfully, my job started at 5 pm. I got some taxes done in the daytime, exercised, got in the car to drive to the location. On the way, this guy I have not seen for 10 years called and asked me to work Thursday. He warned me that it was to be an early 6 am start, and I said that would be fine. I knew I was working Wednesday, but that would not interfere.

Tuesday’s shoot started with a woman whose husband had divorced her soon after they moved into their nice suburban house. She has a son in college and a daughter still at home, in high school. She has raised her family alone in this house and not made any routine repairs on it ‘cause there wasn’t much money for stuff like that. Now she is selling the house and having to make all these repairs at once. So that’s the crux of her story.

I kind of got a crush on her. She’s not age appropriate, she’s raised kids, she’s done a whole lot of living that eludes a single person. So of course it’s silly. But she was really mellow and laid back about meeting me, letting me drop a microphone cable down her blouse, tape the microphone in her blouse, tie an ace bandage around her belly, clip the transmitter to the bandage in the small of her back under her blouse, turn off her refrigerator, and ask her daughter to turn off her stereo. And she was steadily cheerful packing, on camera, for a short vacation to see her old friend whom she would go hiking with and “solve every problem.” Her cheerfulness continued in going over, with her realtor, the hefty home repair costs facing her. It was all just stuff that needed to be done, no need to be down about it. I could learn from that attitude.

She had done some acting in college and knew about video making. “Just shut the door,” she said with an assistant director’s quick-mindedness, when I said “Oops, I’m gonna be in that mirror.” And when we asked what figures she had pointed to with her pen, she knew. Her realtor asked how she could remember. “Continuity. That’s important,” she said.

So you see. She was cool.

Then we had to go to another home where the same realtor was going to meet with a couple and present them the counter offer from a potential buyer. I really dig that couple too. They support each other, they speak their minds well, they have lived all over the world. The man has done community theater all his life so he has a knack for acting, and when his brother comes over, they really put on quite a show for camera, with comic timing and everything. But that night, I wasn’t in to their conversation about counter offers. And it took hours. Honestly, how long does it take to say “no thank you?” I think someone could make a killing as the “Ten Minute Conversation Realtor: You don’t waste my time, I don’t waste yours.”

It was past 10 pm when I finally got out of there. I was too tired to make it to the Passover Seder I had been invited to. I’m not Jewish, but I faithfully attend this particular Seder that friend “M” has. But I missed it this year. I stopped at Cook Out for a huge hamburger, fries, and a shake. I love the post modernity of putting a drive through window for each side of your car, so if you have a passenger, you can pull up to the right-side window and the passenger can receive the goods from the vendor. That night, there was a line for the left-side window, so I went to the right side window and leaned way over.

2 comments:

Marsosudiro said...

She let you turn off her refrigerator? If that ain't crush-worthy, you tell me what IS.

Stew said...

Too bad you missed the seder....it was nice.

And crushes are fun!