Remain Champagne

2nd August 2011

Post with 1 note

HELLO, NORMAN.

The most productive thing I did today was help an old man walk into The House of Pies.  You know, now that I type that, if I really wanted to help him, I should’ve walked him away from the House of Pies.  But he’s waving me over and he’s all: “Excuse me.”  And this is the second time in two weeks that an old person has asked me to help them move.  Not change residences.  To physically move their bodies.  Once on Ivar a couple of weeks ago, I pulled a man out of his car and into a wheelchair.  His hand felt like thick tree bark.  And today, a nice guy named Norman is leaning against his car (shit, he didn’t drive, did he?) in front of the House of Pies and asks me to walk him to the door because he ain’t stable.  “Could you help me to the door?” he asks.  “Sure,” I say.  I’m on my way to the post office with a Netflix envelope and a gas bill.  I take him by the hand, he leans on me and I ask his name.  “Norman,” he says.  Hosting lots of comedy shows has done this thing to me where when I meet people now I ask their name fairly early on which I don’t think I used to do before I was doing stand-up.  You have to constantly connect to people in stand-up.  What a pain.  Such a pain in the ass.  “Shit, I gotta connect with these people?”  “Norman,” he says.  “I’m Matt,” I say.  Whenever I tell an old person my name, I always feel like I have to explain it.  “Matt.  Like, short for Matthew.”  I always feel like they’re not familiar with the name Matt and it needs explaining.  I said that to this one old guy once.  I was like: “Matt.  Like, short for Matthew, you know?”  And he was all: “Yeah, yeah, I get it.  Matt.  There are a ton of yous.”  So I walk Norman into the House of Pies and I walk him to a booth.  I almost said to him: “You know, you should get a cane,” but that ain’t my business really.  Not really.  We should all get canes.  “You good?” I asked him as he collapsed into the booth.  “Yes.  Thank you so much.  That was very nice of you.”  “Nice to meet you,” I say.  “Very nice to meet you,” he said.

And that was it.

Then I walked one point eight-four miles to where I parked my car the night before because I didn’t wanna drive home.  Had Norman been around then, I would’ve asked him for a lift.


I remain

Champagne