Guy talk

The lad, who began his job on Sunday, had today and also tomorrow off. He thought it would be awfully nice if there was a table on the front porch where he could take his laptop and a cup of coffee. That’s not something I had considered before.

“Can I take the table and chairs off the deck and put them on the front porch?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

He poked around the basement for a few minutes hoping to find something, but came up short. Finally, he queried, “If I clean the front porch, could we go out and buy a small table?”

And I thought...oh my, what a nice idea. Especially the cleaning the front porch part.

So he did.

And then we went out in search of a table suitable for a porch.

Well, that was an all afternoon project. We stopped at KMart, WalMart (ick), Home Depot, Lowes, True Value, and two patio furniture stores. Couldn’t find anything I liked. Except for Home Depot, which had the perfectly sized table.

We asked the service desk for some assistance and we wandered back to the patio furniture area. Soon a man came over and seemed relieved that all I wanted was that table and those chairs. He started picking the table up as if to carry it to the check out. “Wait,” I said. “This is the model I’d like, but one of the chairs is broken. Do you have any boxed ones?”

His shoulders drooped and he plodded off, without a word, to find another employee to help him look.

Twenty minutes later, the lad and I were still sitting in the chairs waiting. The lad said, “You know, we could offer to take the table and one chair for a discount. Why don’t you let me try.”

Fine with me. When the man came back, the lad brought up the idea and the strangest thing happened. The man suddenly became quite animated and full of energy. He and the lad walked off together talking a mile a minute. Guy to guy, you know. That kind of irritated me.

When they came back, the lad announced that we could take the table and one chair, as is, at a pretty good discount. We’d have to purchase a new second chair at full price, however. It wouldn’t be available until tomorrow. I asked a question and the guy answered the lad as if I wasn’t even there.

Seeing the look in my eye, the lad thanked the guy and said we’d drop by tomorrow for the table and chairs. He grabbed my elbow and rushed for the door.

Outside in the parking lot he said, “I thought I’d better get you out of there before you clobbered him. That was educational. Did you see how that guy changed when I started talking to him?”

“Um, yeah. It was kind of hard to miss.”

“So,” the lad asked, “Are we coming back tomorrow to get the table and chairs?”

“Not if they were the last ones on earth,” I said.

“Didn’t think so,” he said. “I wouldn’t have believed it unless I saw it. You might as well have been invisible.”

“Know what?” I said. “Let’s just go home and put the deck table and chairs on the front porch. I’ve had enough.”

And that’s what we did.