The Mechanic

I had to take my car in to be serviced this morning. I've been to this place before and the guy is very chatty and friendly. One time, when I first started bringing my car there, he'd looked at the photo on my driver's license (weirdly enough, it's one of the best pictures of me) and had said, "Whoa!" as in..."You look good!" Then, he had glanced at me (my real face, as I stood across his desk) and I could see his face change. It was as if he was thinking, "But you don't look like that in person!"

Well, after yesterday's blog entry, I seriously wondered if my feelings of invisibility are, in fact, due to the fact that I am aging and, in essence, disappearing. I woke up this morning with my hair in really bad shape. It's normally frizzy and can get wild if it needs a cut (my appointment is early next week) and had this bizarre (and frantic) desire to look as good as possible. For the mechanic?! For myself? I don't know. It was just suddenly very important that I didn't look as ugly as I thought that I did. (And maybe do! I don't know anymore!)

There I was, at my bathroom mirror, smathering this anti-frizz grease all over my palms and, then, trying to "glue down" my hair so that it, at least, didn't look as if I was a Halloween left-over. Nothing was working so I had to finally give up. I had to get to the car guy as early as possible so that I wouldn't have to spend the whole day there.

When I walked into the place, he saw me and smiled. We bantered, back and forth, for a bit and then I told him what the car's problem was. He suggested that "we go for a drive" so he could try out the car. We did. He theorized what the mechanical difficulty was and said, "I've got a full house today. Can you leave the car?" When I said that I could, he offered to drive me home. He remembered the town I live in because he's done work on the car so many times. On the way, and I can't believe I'm even writing this, he started flirting with me. I know that some men just act that way and if a woman ever responded, they would run away, or vomit, or both.

I was amazed. All I kept thinking was, "If I were really repulsive, he wouldn't say these (stupid) things, would he?" He was never out-of-line; the guy wants to maintain my business, but I'm not a kid anymore and I know when a guy is being flirtatious, even if he's not being serious. Who knows? Maybe he felt sorry for me, being an old broad with frizzy hair, and he wanted to make me feel good!! Wouldn't that be the worse insult?!

The thing is...his attitude towards me lifted my spirits! He had no idea how down in the dumps I was feeling yesterday. I needed to hear (or believe) that I was "seen" and that's what he did for me this morning. Good timing~

Now, I wait for his call so I can go pick up my car. I'm leaving my hair the way it is!

Over and out...