If I remember correctly, it was a cool summer evening and I was wearing simple canvas shoes and a favorite frock I call my ‘grass cardigan’ because it is soft and green like fresh grass. At the time, my mother’s birthday was approaching, so I’d gone to Gommes’ for a bottle of a new eau called ‘Mothballs’ that was exclu… Read more

If I remember correctly, it was a cool summer evening and I was wearing simple canvas shoes and a favorite frock I call my ‘grass cardigan’ because it is soft and green like fresh grass. At the time, my mother’s birthday was approaching, so I’d gone to Gommes’ for a bottle of a new eau called ‘Mothballs’ that was exclusively available at Gomme Brothers deparment store… but to my chagrin, the clerk at the perfume counter informed that they had just sold out. I was devastated and, becoming vertiginous, fell to the floor in a crumpled ball of spiritual deterioration. Luckily Andy, who had been shopping nearby, overheard the exchange and kindly decided to intervene. He poked me sharply with his transparent plastic umbrella and told me telepathically to get up. Fearing an escalation in the violence of his umbrella, I quickly did so. Meanwhile, the clerk, thinking I might require medical attention, had rung for the store nurse. Andy suggested a ‘comparable scent’ with the charming name of ‘Punch in the Nose, and I was, happily, about to purchase it when she (the store nurse, not my mother) arrived. “You can put your wheelchair away, Mademoiselle… I am handling this matter,” he’d said sternly, attempting to dismiss her with an unambiguous air of control. But not being a Gomme Brothers employee, his charisma and influence were of no avail, and I was promptly wheeled to her office to fill out a mind-boggling multiple-choice test that left me in a state of despair. Apparently, my answers indicated a level of spiritual deterioration that placed me at high risk for ‘self-harm, automutilation and chronic quasimorticide’. Store policy dictated that I could not leave Gomme Brothers without a notarized custodian. Normally, my mother would collect me in this type of situation, but she was away on business. There being no other alternative but for me to remain in the store as a ward of Gomme Brothers indefinitely, Andy (having waited patiently outside while I was taking the test), generously consented to take me into his custody and signed all the necessary papers without a whimper. Not just anyone would do that.

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