Lace Caps

I like to think of myself as a social person. 73% of the time, I refrain from telling stupid people that they're stupid or pointing out acne on the faces of stringy teenage boys. It's rare that I scowl at babies or snicker at the sweating man with a mullet whose hip is gradually laying claim to what is clearly my part of the bench on the subway.

In the car, I sometimes admire my own magnanimity while I watch Cambridge people walk by. I try to follow Atticus Finch's advice an put myself in their places. I step into their shoes to walk around in them. I imagine waking up in the morning and deciding that it would be a twinkling, sparkling stroke of brilliance to garb myself in purple burlap hammerpants for which I have paid $365 at an obscure boutique in the South of Italy where I summer. If I dress in drab enough fabrics of obscure enough origin and droopy enough drape, I might be able to conceal the fact that I grew up in a suburb of Toledo. I imagine taking the bus from Belmont to Harvard Square at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning. When the office secretary flipped my forged note onto her stack with pursed lips, and I realized with surprise that I had gotten away with it. What glory! To flip through records in the clammy basement of In Your Ear at 11:30 instead of at 3:45 while an aging, balding Clash fan glares at me from behind his counter. The light is cleaner now, and the secrets of the adult world are open to me. I wear girls' cigarette black jeans and a fedora that I wear ironically. I think.

I decide to share my depth of insight with my husband. "Don't you just love people?" I muse, leaning back and watching an embittered nanny trying to fold a blonde whining mess into a Bugaboo stroller. Smiling, my husband reminds me that I don't in fact like people. "Remember last night at the movies when you said 'I hate people?'" Yes, but that was because the 8-year-old behind me insisted on using my seat as a foot-drum while her mother chronically cleared her throat and then kept uncrossing and re-crossing her legs. Hardly a fair example.

"OK. What about that woman in your section?"

What woman? Oh yes. When Fred Buechner came to speak to our literature class about landscape and spiritual thin places, he agreed to take ten minutes of questions. Most of us sat stunned when he'd finished speaking. We were still riding on the rhythm of his language. Except for Sandy, who was always seeing immediate connections to her own life. She raised her hand. "Mr. Buechner, you talked about placed where you can see through the veil into the divine. From my work in New Orleans last year after Katrina, what do you think about when the veil is not just thinned and drawn aside, but it's actually torn?"

"I'm sorry. I don't understand," Buechner scanned the crowd for another raised hand.

"What about when the veil is not only drawn aside but torn?" Sandy persisted.

"I just don't know what you mean."

Undeterred, she sat and told the young man sitting beside her a story about her son's new baby who apparently shows signs of being quite talented.

I turn back to my husband. "I know what you mean. I try to think of her as a character out of Jane Austen. Think of the wonderful characters whom you'd hate if you met them walking around at the mall. I'm going to put a lace cap on Sandy."

"Hm. Good luck. We'll see how long that lasts. What about that guy?" He points to a 55-year-old man pulling his brand new Sebring convertible into our parking spot. The man backs out and re-aligns until it's perfect. He gets out, careful not to slam the door too hard.

"Definitely a lace cap candidate." Aren't we all sometimes?