May-September Love

It is humorous, when I think about it, the things that strangers will tell me without much prompting. I had just met a May-September couple from Palm Beach. The woman, Nicole, was many years younger than her companion Robert, and they were an attractive match. Her jet-black hair tied tight back like a Spanish aristocrat’s was in sharp contrast to Robert’s gray hair and salt-and-pepper beard. They looked like movie stars: he, Cary Grant with a beard and she an equally elegant Audrey Hepburn.

“Nice day,” I remarked, and that’s all it took. Like old friends, their story spilled out as if the little Dutch boy had removed his finger from the dike. First a trickle, and then a deluge.
Both, it unfolds, had experienced loveless and dissolving marriages. They had discovered each other when Robert was shopping in a Palm Beach department store, where Nicole worked.

“I walked into this store and looked at the most gorgeous woman that I had ever seen,” he told me. His guileless smile spoke as much about his feelings as his words. She smiled and the air rippled, they exchanged electricity and I think I saw the spark.

Some of their lovers’ tale was sketchy and incomplete but they both had children and Robert quipped that, “One of us has grandkids, too.”
He told me that his mother had called him earlier in the week to tell him that his wife and her boyfriend were in Israel on vacation, then he added that Nicole’s husband was in Nevada doing his own thing.
He and Nicole had traveled, first to Little Palm Island for a couple of days, and then found themselves on the “Afterdeck” at Louie’s Backyard, the ultimate Key West rendezvous for romantics.

Robert did most of the talking, while Nicole smiled agreeably, although I think that she might have been ready to place a strategically place kick if necessary. Then Robert mentioned that “she has a thing for older men.
“Lucky me,” he added.
More electricity sizzled.
“And the one time that she was involved with someone nearer her age, it ended badly.”

My thoughts ran through the spectrum of ways that relationships end, and naively, I lightly danced into a minefield.
“I went out with a younger man for three months and when I told him that it wasn’t working out…,” she paused and took a deep breath before continuing, then told me the rest of her story. The details are not pleasant, and suffice it to say that it did end badly, extremely so, the young man causing himself grave physical harm, in her presence.
No one smiled. A hand was squeezed.

They had a plane to catch and after we parted company I thought about how in the space of fifteen minutes I had traveled from stranger to confidante. I had shared in the joy, the sadness, the expectations and the hopes of this couple. I always hope to hear joyful endings to love stories, but in the real world that’s not always how it happens.

Some time later, an elderly couple sat down next to me at a table overlooking the ocean. The man was wearing a pale yellow bow tie, the real McCoy, not a clip-on. The woman’s crisp white hair was nearly silver against the blue horizon. They held hands and looked as if they truly appreciated each other’s company. When their eyes met, the ozone shifted. I could see another love story.
They looked in my direction. “Nice day,” I commented.

WHERE GOOGLE FALLS SHORT, MEMORIES STEP IN

The two people were locked in heavy conversation. Few kind words were being exchanged, and there was little attempt to temper the volume or antagonism of their argument. It was a good thing there were no weapons on the table, or it could have gotten really ugly.

I'm not sure how the fiasco began, but by the time I arrived at the waterfront Hogfish Bar on Stock Island and found my seat at a nearby table, they were going at it pretty strong.

The adjacent working marinas, filled with an eclectic array of live-aboards, commercial fishing vessels, sailboats and sports fisherman, usually offer up a ``close your eyes and you're in the 1950s'' ambience. The air is alive with the pungent bouquet of dead fish and diesel fuel and filled with the clang of halyards slapping at masts, the grinding of gears, the creaking of boat against dock, the chug-chug-chugging of ships' engines set to slow ahead.

TOUGH CROWD
It was not so this day. The pair's dispute was like chalk on a blackboard and a reminder of days past, prior to the gentrification of the Florida Keys, when this restaurant was an offshoot of the rough-and-tumble Red's, an infamous Key West watering hole on Caroline Street that sold cheap booze to drunken sailors and angry bikers. ``Red'' opened this bar after he had to vacate his downtown Key West location but has since moved along to the great biker bar in the sky.

MEET THE CONTESTANTS
The participants in this particular verbal prize-fight were not from the usual cast of Key West characters. Contestant No. 1, angry and unsightly, weighed in at approximately 200 pounds, wore plaid shorts and flip-flops and wagged his finger in the face of contestant No. 2.
She was a petite, well-dressed woman who couldn't weigh much more than 100 pounds dripping wet, an Audrey Hepburn look-alike who wore thick, black rhinestone-studded eyeglasses, her hair in a ponytail. She was angry, too, but cute, like a pixie up to some mischief.
They were fighting, hot and heavy, about who had more Google hits, each staking their claim to fame by the number of times their name appears on that Internet site, and the importance that that fact holds. The argument was beyond ludicrous even before she told him that his arrest record shouldn't count. They niggled back and forth and thankfully ran out of steam before a punch could be thrown.

After the couple left, I struck up a conversation with a tired-looking gentleman sitting nearby who had been shaking his head throughout the couple's fight.
``Pretty pathetic,'' the man said, pointing toward the parking lot where the couple, now holding hands, headed toward their car. ``They think they're so important.''
I assumed he thought the argument as silly as I did, but when he added, ``I've probably got more Google hits than the both of them put together,'' I kept my opinion to myself.

THE GOOGLE TEST
I had never thought about Google as a barometer of one's importance or worth. When I arrived home, I Googled several important people in my life, people I hold close in my heart and mind: my fourth-grade teacher, Doris Smith, who taught me humor. Not one Google hit. Then I tried my eighth-grade teacher, Paris Amico, who passed along reasoning and dignity. Not a line. Next, I entered my father, George Suib, who taught me to value each word as a prize, and who, while I was growing up, never gave me the answer to a question free of charge, instead pointing me in the right direction, allowing me to figure it out myself. Not one solitary hit. It's impossible, I thought. Google, with its vast and complex memory system of numbers and codes, hadn't the foggiest idea who these important people were.

I shut my computer down and switched to a far more accurate search engine, the search engine of my heart and mind. And the hits keep coming.

We have telephones that can take photos and transmit them anywhere in the world in nanoseconds. We have the technology to transport a person to the moon and back and medical techniques that can increase our life spans and our libidos. But just try to wend your way through a supermarket check-out counter using their latest modern advancement, the Automatic Electronic Cashier (AEC’s) and, excuse the 50’s vernacular, “yikes!” It’s as fast as a third trimester snail rushing to the delivery room.

These electronic cashiers were installed several months ago at my local Winn-Dixie, but today is the first time that I decide that I will jump into the pool and get my AEC feet wet. It has taken me months to try the new system because I liked the old method just fine. A real person to talk to is a good thing, I think.

“Hello. How are you today? You’re looking chipper.” All are little civilities that add to the texture of the day.

Curiosity and temptation finally got the best of me and after watching several people navigate their way through the area set up solely for AEC transactions, I felt ready for the adventure.

I would guess that the installation of the AEC’s is a cost savings method. Eliminating a person from standing in front of a cash register should equate to a lower payroll, right? But I also notice that there are a number of former cashiers who are now in a managerial position. Their underlings being the AEC”s. This reminds me of the attendants standing by each of the Automatic Toll Machines on many of our highways. It does not appear to be very cost effective.

I start sweating when the gray-haired man in front of me at the AEC check-out begins to run into some trouble. He has scanned a bottle of wine, and his machine makes a general announcement to the entire store that he is attempting to purchase an “age restricted item”.

“Whaddaya mean, age restricted,” he demands, but the machine merely repeats the message and then announces that an associate will soon appear to verify his date of birth. The man looks around puzzled.

The AEC holds its ground and repeats the message again. I think that I hear the machine chuckle, but it is one of the associates, who arrives and allows the AEC to continue.

The machine gets bolder. The same man places several apples on the scanning pad, which has a scale built into its sensors. The screen above it lights up with photos of two dozen different fruits and vegetables and asks the man to pick the proper item, which he does. But it is not a choice of the machine’s liking and it suggests that he, “Please choose again.” The man, feverishly punching screen buttons, finally pokes one that the AEC agrees with.

Now come the bananas. The man behind me, in the now backlogged check-out line, suggests that if the bananas don’t make it through the system, he is afraid that someone from Homeland Security might come out and shoot the guy.

“Order a strip search, or at least have him remove his shoes” I add. We discuss whether we will be ‘profiled’ by our purchases.
“Probably, will be,” we agree.

The man on the check-out hot seat is not having fun. The machine balks when he fails to put his purchased items into the plastic sack in the proper order, by advising him that “the weight of the item purchased does not correspond to the last item” being placed in his bag.
Then, the man does it. He hollers at the AEC.

Oh, c’mon,” he screeches, “what are you talking about”?
The area instantly becomes quiet. You can hear a lemon drop. But the running footfalls of several associates rushing to the man’s, or the AEC’s, assistance bring his trouble to an end. They are able to successfully complete his transaction, and rapidly usher him out the front door.
It’s my turn. The pressure is on. I inhale, a deep breath, and take the plunge. I have six items and nothing that needs weighing. This is going to be a walk in the park.

The machine greets me: “Welcome, please begin scanning.”
So far so good.
Then comes the warning about putting my purchases into the correct bag. Uh, Oh, I think, I forgot that part. But with a deft hands I shift an item from the scanner into a bag, and I am good to go, again.
When I have scanned all six items and poke the “CASH” button as my preferred method of payment, the AEC announces, “Now processing.” I allow myself a premature smile before the machine continues, “We are unable to complete your transaction. Please select another payment method.”
My smile disappears. And I can find no associate to help me.
Silence. The AEC is waiting for me to do something.
Now I am sure. This machine is electronically giving me the fickle finger. I do the only thing a reasonable person can do. I look directly into its 14-inch diagonal viewing screen and say, “Hello. How are you today? You’re looking chipper,” and then I push the “CASH” button again.
In seconds it’s over. My money is accepted, receipt tendered and I’m on my way.
Next time I shop, I’m going back to my dinosaur ways; I’m going share my civility with a person, not a machine.

I only hope that my computer isn’t reading this.