I was in the local Circuit City this evening to purchase a cable modem and 6 months of Internet cable service for my ex-wife, so the kids will have broadband at her house. I’m going about my business when I spy this slender but curvy, very tall girl with shortish hair in a pair of hip huggers with a little mid-section showing between her T-shirt and her jeans, looking sort of lost, and think, “WOW! That’s my cup of tea!”
She looked to be in her early 20’s and had a vaguely shy “foreign” look about her where I would have bet money that she was German or Scandinavian. I’m 45, and had no nefarious intent in mind as she looked closer to my 16-year-old daughter’s age than mine, but sometimes there are certain face and body combinations that just ring a bell for you, and mine had been rung by this 6 foot tall girl.
Anyway, I figured she had enough on her plate without being pestered by my glancing attentions, so I headed to a register determined to just get the cable modem and be on my way. The clerk at the register didn’t have a clue how process the cable modem sign up, so she sent me back to the computer area and shortly I was standing right behind the tall girl in line.
I saw she had a piece of paper in her hand that had a notebook model # and being the helpful sort, I told her it was a good notebook PC and that I owned one. She appeared slightly confused and I pointed where it was stored behind the glass. Her English was halting but understandable as she asked to cashier for the notebook. The cashier told her to be sure and get a notebook bag if she needed one, and she left to get one. A minute of so later she came back with a big plastic shopping bag she had gotten from the front of the store. I was utterly charmed at this point and took her over to the padded notebook bags and told her this was what the cashier meant. She demurred saying she didn’t need one as she was shipping it home.
She then peeled off $ 1000 in cash and paid for her notebook. After doing this she asked the cashier if there was a local taxi she could call to take her to the bus station. Well … what else could I do? It was dark outside and I so I offered to drive her to the bus station if she could wait until I finished the cable modem transaction. She said OK and waited.
We went out to the car and I was glad I was driving the large Denali SUV instead of the Accord, as even with the front passenger seat kicked back to the maximum she filled up ever inch of the available front seat legroom with a pair of legs that had to be 36 inches long. We move out of the parking lot and I ask her where she’s going from the bus stop and she says Ocean City, which is about 35 miles away. Well… what else could I do, let her sit at grubby bus stop in a bad part of town with a new notebook PC and several hundred in cash in her purse, or do the gentlemanly thing and deliver her to her doorstep?
So we cruise on RT 50 for about the next 40 minutes or so and she tells me about her family in Estonia, and her summer waitress job in Ocean City, how she loves the US but is homesick and is going back to college in Estonia, but really wants to go to school in the US. When she asks what I do, I wave at the commercial buildings we are passing on the highway and give her my commercial real estate agent business card. We talked about Estonian history and the Euro and a dozen other things. All in all charming little road trip with the longest pair of legs I have ever had in my car with a girl who is cute as a button.
It’s one of the nicest evenings of the year and the moon is as big as a pie plate in the night sky as we drive along and talk. I deliver her to her doorstep and she thanks me and says, “I’m sure we’ll see each other again” which slightly puzzled me.
Driving back to Salisbury I felt curiously lighthearted just for having chatted with this interesting young girl and shared some space with her, and wondered over the course of events that brought us briefly together.
I was brought sharply back to the real world when I delivered the modem to my ex and daughter after getting back into town, and told them about meeting the girl from Estonia, which started a 20 minute lecture from my ex to my daughter about how this girl was obviously insane, and that my daughter should never accept rides from strangers or her mother would kill her, and the audible click of my daughters eyes rolling back into her head as she listened to her.
Still… it was a nice interlude in an otherwise mundane day.