7:45 a.m. - Saturday, Jan. 04, 2003
\"HI!!! Good MORning!!\" they all said.
Two years ago? Three? I can�t remember. It was before I started seeing my real therapist for PTSD. It was while I was still living as a guy. It was when my life seemed the blackest that I found myself seeing a therapist at the county mental health center. He was a really, really nice guy, who wanted to help me.
He wanted me to tell him what I did for enjoyment. I couldn�t think of a thing. No hobbies, no passions, no nuthin�. He asked me what I�d LIKE to do for enjoyment. Again� a total blank. I couldn�t think of a thing that was worth the effort. The only thing that I could think of.. but I didn�t tell him� was that I was becoming fascinated with the trains that go roaring along the coast just about every hour. I was living very near a crossing and was becoming obsessed with the idea of pulling in front of one in the car. I was tying to time my arrivals at the crossing so as to be right up next to the train as it sped past. Quite the little hobby, wouldn�t you say?
So I couldn�t think of anything I WANTED to do. Finally, he asked me to think back on my life and tell him the last time I did anything I really enjoyed and what it was.
I had to think for a long time. Then, suddenly I realized that the last time I had truly enjoyed myself and felt relaxed was when I was 14 or 15 years old. I had a two speed Schwin that I had paid for myself out of the money I made doing two paper routes. One in the morning and one in the evening. I rememebred all the hours and hours I spent on that bike. It was a part of me. The best times I could remember were when I would steal a pack of Marlboros and a couple of Cokes and take my old fishing pole on my bike outside of town to a country bridge across a muddy, slow river. I would sit in the sun and just try not to think at all while I smoked cigarettes and dangled my baitless hook into the lifeless water. No one ever came across that bridge. The country road had long since been bypassed by the freeway. I loved being alone there and I loved riding my bike on the deserted road to get there.
So my therapist suggested I get a bike and ride it. No one had told him how resistant I am to suggestions. And the funny thing is, I was so taken aback that I had to reach into my adolescence to find a time of enjoyment that I agreed to give it a try.
Accordingly, I bought a pretty nice bicycle. I got one designed to be sporty, yet easy on an aging bum. It wsa a black Trek Navigator 300 if you know bikes. With a foam saddle mounted on a shock-absorbing post, ith as 24 speeds, a shock-absorbing handlebars and a kick-ass luggage rack.
I rode that bike a lot for almost a year. Then, when I made my last break and went on the road, I left the bike behind at Ann�s house. It sat for a year while I was gone. Then, when I came back and rented this apartment, it sat in my bedroom for going on two years. I did get it out and ride it once or twice, but I had a hard time finding non-busy streets to ride on. So the tires went flat again and the dust built up. Until yesterday.
Yesterday, I pumped up the tires again. I took it out this morning and rode it in the pre-dawn all the way to��. (blush) Waffle House. Well, understand that it was cold out there this morning. There was ice on the windshields and a frigid nasty little breeze blowing. It wasn�t the ideal minute for bicycling but you know me�. Ten years to get started and then nothing can stop me once I make up my mind. So I rode to the Waffle House, locked my bike up and went in to have breakfast with the six o�clock denizens you find out and about at that hour. Geez.. I guess that makes me a denizen too.
Waffle House, in case you haven�t seen one, is almost like a different culture. They are all alike. Usually just barely clean enough to keep you from turning away and walking back out but with a veneer of grease on all the walls and counters. Grease is a Waffle House stock in trade. They don�t sell waffles so much as they do grease. Eggs fry in pools of it. Hash browns are baptized in it. There is always at least a gallon of Lo-Melt grease setting by the grill with a dipper in it. There�s not a shred of fabric in the place. The inside of it is a hard tile and formica sunny yellow just about everywhere yellow will fit. They make a fleeting curtsey to fashion by adding some brown along the edges. It�s the kind of brown that almost looks like wood. Greasy wood.
There�s never more than one cook, and he.. or she.. performs almost aerobically a frantic, yet controlled dance while the three or more waitresses scream at them in a language known only to Waffle House staff and alumni. I thin it has something to do with food:
�Two mad blasters on a rack, melted, scribbled, scattered, and hacked with a side of shavings, hold the cat-sauce and stand them on their head�
You know.. stuff like that. I ordered a waffle.
�Waffle!�, my waitress shouted. �Waffle!� the cook echoed. I wondered what they meant by that.
Part of the culture of Waffle House is that all the waitresses have to greet every customer like a long lost relative as soon as they shadow the door.
�Hey! Good Morning!� They all chirp mechanically every time the feel a breeze from the opening door. If they know the person, they greet him by name. Mostly they don�t. But my goodness they are friendly. And if you sit at the counter, they are enterataining. And the thing is, it�s really kind of genuine. It�s like for as long as it takes to eat a slam-blasted ham fried shingle stopper... or a waffle, you are part of their lives. You can watch them argue with their kids on the phone, or argue over whether the cook cooked it wrong or the waitress called it wrong, or whatever else is going on there. Lord help us.. it�s a family.
Oh, yeah.. so that�s where I went on my bike this morning. It was cold. Well, it was cold for here. Barely nippy for people who know snow. It was invigorating. It was entertaining. It was enjoyable, even if I WAS a denizen.
I might do it again.
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