The husband was a co-worker and car-repair buddy of my husband’s. The couple got into Amway a few years after he and my husband had become friends.
The couple had lived together unmarried for years, but their Amway distributor convinced them that God and Amway would prefer they not live together in sin, and offered to host their wedding.
The wife at one point was also selling makeup, but was still wearing makeup styles from back in her glory days in the 1960’s. They weren’t very successful as salespeople.
A custodian at a building where I worked passed, unexpectedly. Everybody liked him. He was really personable and always glad to help. But he also talked to people…he was the kind of guy who would chat people up, ask for a recipe if it sounded like something healthy, and so on.
He was Black. He must have worked out…his arms looked like my legs on a good day (I know the work can be rigorous but he must have worked out). He was chiseled, no other word for it…he probably could have bench pressed a Volvo. And he was maybe 50 when he died. I have no idea what happened.
I’m a white man, and the visitation was almost entirely Blacks. I spoke to some people who were family and they seemed to glare at me. My words fail me. I suspect that the fact that he was a custodian fed into this somehow, like condescension might be expected. Far from it. You couldn’t not like him.
I was really glad to get out of there. People in grief, I get it.
I’ve lived in Asia for more than 30 years now. I speak fluent Japanese and was used to being the only foreigner there. My Mandarin isn’t as good but I’m used to not understanding things.
Maybe the first time I really felt like a fish out of water was just before I went on an LDS mission to Japan. I grew up in a devote Mormon family and through early high school, I was really a firm believer in the faith. During high school I fell into a really bad crowd which helped shake the faith. Yes, the D&D people and lost a lot of my belief that Mormonism was the only true religion.
There was a lot of pressure to go on a mission, and eventually I did. Part of the process is then going through the secret Mormon temple ritual where you get the special underwear and have special temple clothes. At the end of the long process, you go into a room where the other members of the same session can congregate and talk with each other.
The room was filled with devote members who were dedicating their lives to Mormonism. Despite having grown up as a Mormon, having been completely immersed in that community, it was a completely different level and I strongly felt that I just didn’t belong. My parents were both there as well as an aunt who was gushing about how wonderful the temple was and that I had finally been able to join them, and I just wanted to get the hell out of the holiness.
When I was in college, I decided to enter a sprint triathlon. At the check-in booth the morning of the event, they asked each athlete how good they were or how much time they expected it would take them to finish. The fastest athletes start first, and the slowest start last. I thought I gave the receptionist an honest answer about my skill level, but for reasons unknown to me, she put me near the very front of the pack. Swimming is the first event, and all the other swimmers in my general start time kicked my ass. It was quite a disastrous triathlon for me.
IOW, it was very much a nonfish-in-water situation for me.