Sophie's Story

 At the beginning of 2001, I started a new job in a new town. My manager and I had both been brought in to start a new store. I was excited. I had left my last job because of personality conflicts with my coworkers. No one was getting along. I dreaded going to work wondering if I was going to get another day of the silent treatment.   This time it would be different. My new manager was a man named Scott. He, his wife Ava and two young children had moved from Iowa. He had been a manager for several years. I had spoken to him briefly and liked him. I was sure we'd get along. Joining the staff was our tech, Gana. Gana was my age with three children. I liked her too.    Scott had asked me to get acquainted with Ava. He and Ava had lived in Iowa near their families since they'd graduated from college. This was the first time Ava had moved away from them. He was worried that she would feel alone. I was happy to do this. It was something I was planning on doing a...

    The walk sign had come on. C and I were about to cross the street when C grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me towards him. I was a little annoyed at being grabbed so roughly, but in a second it became clear why he had done so. A car going way too fast had blatantly run the red light. I wasn't looking that direction so I didn't see the speeding car. I was grateful that he had been watching and my annoyance at him was replaced with annoyance at the driver.   That is one of the few things I don't like about where we live. There seem to be a lot of people who think that stop signs or lights are suggestions to stop, not rules.   It wasn't the first time I'd had a near death experience on a city street. About 15 years or so ago I was crossing a street. The walk sign was on. I crossed the street and stopped partway through because my hair had blown into my eyes. I paused to push my hair back so I could see. It was a good thing I did because a car had run...

   Dana and I were having coffee this morning. Well, actually to be fair neither of us were having coffee. I was drinking tea and she was drinking hot chocolate. I was showing her a stich sampler that I was working on. A stitch sampler is a strip of various knitting stitches used to learn or practice technique. I wanted to make a scarf using these various stitches and told her that I wanted to learn a few more stitches before starting the scarf.   Dana asked, "Would you like to learn cables?"    My knees turned to water. I would have fallen except that I was sitting. Did I want to learn cables? I wasn't capable of learning cables. Cables those wonderful patterns that are used on sweaters all over the world. I tried to read how to knit them... once. It involved complicated twisting of stiches and directions and things that made my head spin. I was nowhere good enough to learn how to knit cables. I'm only a novice.   "I'm not sure I can do that," I sa...

   C and I went to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival today. We do this every year about this time. This year we did something different. We did not attend the Feast of Fantasy.   The Feast is a meal of several courses with various types of entertainment between the courses. There are jugglers, dancers,madrigals and storytellers. Sometimes the King will pay a visit. The Feast is hosted by the Feastmaster and his assistant. It is a good time and the audience is encouraged and sometimes roped into participating.    One thing that has been happening in recent years is that the Feast has become increasingly raunchy. It was always just a little bit racy, but the humour kept getting bluer and bluer. Last year there was some humour that C and I found seriously offensive. We needed to stop going to the Feast.   It was a little strange. C kept talking about how we needed to make reservations. I reminded him that we needed reservations becaus...

   Hello, this is Colby. I am writing the column today. Sophie was going to write it. I convinced her to take a break.    Last night she was in the kitchen with a towel over her head. I asked her what she was doing. She said that she was steaming her sinuses. She lifted the towel up and showed me the pot of water that was making the steam. I asked her why she was doing that. She said she had a head cold. I touched her head with my nose. It was warm. I don't know why she thought her head was cold, maybe the steam was warming it up.   Humans do strange things. For instance, Sophie paints her toenails. It's really weird. She has all these little bottles of paint in different colours. She has this long routine that she goes through. First she takes this smelly stuff and rubs it on her nails. This takes the paint off her nails. It smells bad and makes her skin pucker up. Once her nails have no paint on them, she cuts them. I can understand thi...

   Through the wonders of technology (Facebook) I was able to have lunch with a friend today. Why would I need technology to have a lunch date? (It has nothing to do with the food...) My friend was at work in Washburn Wisconsin. I am in St. Paul. Washburn is a bit of a hike from here about 200 some odd miles. Definitely too far to drive for a lunch date.   The lunch date wasn't planned actually. I hopped on Facebook to see what was going on and noticed that Cori was logged on. I hailed her with a friendly "howdy". She was taking a lunch break. I decided it was a good time for me to have lunch too.    We sat at our respective computers and typed back and forth to each other. We talked about dating and how younger women just aren't as smart about it as we used to be. We talked about people we used to know down in southern Minnesota. We talked about how my mom wanted me to be more like her and her mom wanted her to be more like me. We talked about hobbies. I w...