Seated Shrinking

Saturday night, I had a date with a man who took me to dinner, and out and about, and I spent an hour putting on my makeup just right, and fixing my hair just right, and wearing my drop-dead outfit just right; and when the bell rang, I flung the door wide open to find him standing there in faded jeans, dirty gym shoes, a tee-shirt, and a red ski jacket with the lift tag still hanging from the zipper, never mind that it was a springtime 65 degrees outside.  My heart sank.  Not the love of my life, thought I, knowing full well that I didn’t believe in that stuff.  I let myself into the passenger seat, adjusted my designer leather mini-skirt, and fastened my seat belt, instead of making a bolt toward the front door, yelling, Mistake! Mistake! like I wanted to.  He slid behind the wheel, and became my fascination for the rest of the night.  Where did he go?  In a seated position, his body seemed to collapse in on itself, making me the tall one, at barely five feet.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  Where did he go, I wondered anew, wanting to reach over and pull back the layers of his jacket to see for myself.  I had to get a read on his posture.  How was he put together so that he collapsed when he sat down, without pain?  How could his lungs expand?  How could his heart beat?  Weren’t his ribs crushing up against one another?  Wasn’t he short of breath, or experiencing chest pains?  Did his legs grow while his body shortened?  Did he fold, like an accordion, into the crease that was formed where the seat-back met the seat bottom?  When I realized I was staring rudely, I looked out the front windshield.  But all night long, every time we sat down―at the restaurant, in the theatre, in the car, in the coffee house afterward, with our table in the front, close to the guitar player on his wooden stool, who closed his eyes dreamily whenever he leaned toward the microphone―I studied him, trying to figure out where he went when he sat down, and trying to resist the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him up straight.

Comments

[Linda]

Louise,
I just want to tell you how much I enjoy reading your entries. Your descriptions and attention to detail are amazing. I've been reading you for a long, long time, and I love how you take a small incident and put the reader right inside it. And this "Seated Shrinking" is another example of that.

[Louise]

Linda, thank you so much!

[kathy]

This is one of my many favorites!!! Where did he go? It was just a MISTAKE!!!! Some times it takes me a while to read your entries but I do love them all when i read them. love kathy

[Jeff Priess]

Great Read!