I had another close encounter with Tom Wopat. Tom is the actor who portrayed Luke Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard, if you remember your American tv history. Tom (we're on a first name basis) is also the man with the overloud voice who annoyed me in a department store earlier this summer. Well, today I had to dash to the corner store for some Coca Cola products (regular for my husband, diet for me, and no, Pepsi won't do). While I was reading a magazine in the checkout line I heard this booming, hearty voice saying hello to the manager of the store. "God, I hate loud people," I was thinking when it suddenly occured to me there was something familiar about the experience. I looked up from my copy of Vogue and there he was in the next checkout line, booming heartily and very obviously hoping to attract attention.
I sneered and went back to my magazine. Actors get on my last nerve.
By the time I got out my wallet to pay for the Cokes, ol' Tom was bagging his own groceries. I had a good stare at him, just making sure I wasn't sneering at some hapless stranger. No, it was him. I thought about what it might be like to have once been a big deal and then slowly sliding into obscurity (he might disagree with me about the obscurity). He was wearing a Wisconsin Badgers hat. I was wearing a Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt. Our eyes met across the stack of paper bags. What the hell. I smiled and said, "Nice hat, Tom." He beamed. No, he really did. He said something about Go, Bucky (the Badgers' mascot), and I grinned and walked out to my car.
The store manager carried my groceries out for me. As he put them in the trunk for me he said, "You just made his day. He loves to be recognised. He comes in here all the time and he always talks real loud, especially to the ladies." I thought about that some more as I drove home. Only three days ago I'd had a public hissy fit about not getting recognised for my unique contribution to the online journal scene and yet I was ready to be snarky about someone else's longing for fame and recognition.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
The IndexNext Entry