It is not a huge secret that I like to live in Kallie World. Most of the time it is a lovely place and nary a care is found. Kallie World is an inclusive place where everyone understands me automatically because I’ve already had 100 conversations with them in my head, as if I talk to their ghost. I live in my head where I forget that people can see my face and take notice of me. I live in a place where I’m so used to freedom, I forget what it takes to lie, or keep careful control of my face. I like Kallie World, it’s quite there and I don’t have to pretend to be anything I’m not. Too often I find myself molding myself to being someone else, a funnier friend, a better listener, a more interesting conversationalist, another superlative. I am the shadow in corner and emerge saying “hello miss lady” when I’m needed and change myself to be that. I contradict myself and find myself retreating to Kallie World once my charade is over and, in all honesty, it is another reason I find it so hard to make a damn choice, to put my foot down and draw a boundary, to put myself first, to say a hard no. I’m not exactly sure who Kallie is outside in the real world, and it is the rare few people who can recognize that sense of lost and still appreciate the rest of I am whom I really appreciate.

            Now that brings us to Thursday. Unbeknownst to most of you, this is my favorite day of the week. I’m not sure why I love it so much, I think it is because ya girl is a nerd and in school I was excited to have one more day of school, but everyone is pre-buzzing on Thursday, humming if you will. There is a static energy in the air, it’s not quite ready to explode out the door, but it is a dragon slowly shivering awake and blinking its emerald eyes open, it is this pulsing of a beehive, it is that quiet moment before the sky opens up with whatever weather it had in store. I mean… you can also liken it to someone warming up their tuba before a concerto but… you come here for the poetic ideas, right? It could also be because I hate choosing things everyone else already likes. Fridays? Pedantic. The color pink? Abhorrent. Breaking Bad? Never heard of her. Social Media? None for me thanks, please send me a telegram. At any rate, I love Thursdays, and now I have something more to look forward to: Ross. Now, now everyone calm down, yes we know that is my last name, but, no, it is not myself looking at my reflection wearing some sports jersey. This is a real-life functioning man who comes in once weekly to audit charts and supervise the unlicensed therapists (when I put it that way, he sounds much less magical than he is).

            Admittedly, before I get into the beauty of our friendship, it is very easy to admire someone when you see them a few hours every week. It is easy to find someone fascinating when you spend less that 2% of your entire week with them. It is downright irresponsible of me to not mention that for a few reasons: it’s true, I know it clouds my judgement, and I’m certain this is why he finds me interesting too. I am easy to take in small doses, it turns out, but lose my spark when you spend a few days with me and realize that the blank look and zoning off are not signs of being tired, rather, it is me having a conversation in my head or singing some show tune trying to remember the lyrics. It is easy to get excited about small things and go on a tangent about something in the middle of another conversation. I can be selfish and pedantic. I can be a bit of an English snob and try to force conversations about the implications of the US using troops to defend Taiwan against China because no one around me wants to talk shop (Sorry, Alianna, I couldn’t help myself…). There is a subtle art to understanding anyone, really, but in particular, people who live in their head and only emerge with the shiny new thing their magpie personality found waving wildly for a few seconds until they lose interest and retreat back into their heads. I don’t say that to belittle myself, exactly, but I say it because, again, the people who do love and care for me gently repeat themselves when I openly admit I stopped listening and I know who my people are.

            Now for the beauty of the friendship… I’d like to start at the beginning, but like any good story, in medias res seems to be the way to go (mostly because I don’t remember how this began). I will begin it with how my Thursday early morning begins now with Ross popping his head in my office double checking that we have coffee for him. Like a puppy, I always sit a little straighter when I see him and nod in the affirmative. He smiles (I assume, because of masks I can’t actually know) and winks at me. Let’s pause here, how often will I say that I am excited for an old man to wink at me? I think, while I haven’t gotten to the point, it is my point. On this pause, I suppose I should say that I don’t dislike old men… I give them a bad rap a lot but mostly it is because generalizing my experience with them is easier, but truth be told there are many old men that I quite enjoy the company of. So, Ross gets his coffee and slowly makes his way around the maze of our office and makes sure to say hello to everyone and I mean everyone. He knows their name, and typically a little something about them to follow up on. He takes his sweet time strolling the halls in his khaki shorts. He retired about a year ago but agreed to come in and audit and supervise on one condition: “I ain’t ever wearing pants again”. He tells me this often and how freeing it is to work with your knees exposed. In the summer he breezes, literally breezes in with a Hawaiian shirt and every Thursday without fail I say Aloha and he gives me a little hula dance with the tiniest little pep right into the flowing motion of his arms. We exchanged the two Hawaiian words we know and giggle between the pair of us and just as quickly as we were laughing we gets serious:

            “You know, Kallie, I really think it is just something that you have traveled so much.” I try to sluff this off, as I do all compliments and he catches that. “You know, I’m serious, why do you think you don’t give yourself credit?” Now, you might have caught on that Ross retired from therapy. You can see it in his eyes (probably his whole face but you know… masks) that he is invested in your next words. He has an ability to be and stay present that draws me out of my own world for more time than I ever have. Sitting with Ross I don’t think of my next hour, I don’t think of my next conversation, I don’t even put on my polite listening face while looking at my reflection in the window. I am there with him. I am there with him when he whimsically describes his old college campus he worked on. I’m there with him as he gives descriptions of his life in Hollywood trying to make it as a playwright. I’m fully there with him as he uses the most poignant and sparce hand motions to describe a sci-fi series that would really “tickle me” given “all that I am”. How can he know that? Sometimes I wonder, and yet he hasn’t been wrong to date.

            When I told him I had recently gotten a book of Hemmingway’s short stories he immediately told me the three I had to read. I greedily read those three first and he wasn’t wrong. These stories took me to a place that I hadn’t been in a while. Maybe that is an exaggeration, maybe it is because I hadn’t read fiction in so long I forgot what it was like. Or maybe, just maybe, this kindred spirit with part of my name really knew what I liked. I’ve never told him, per say, much of my life. We spoke briefly about my time overseas, my love of books, my hopes for the future… but there is something about his conversation style that makes me want to capture it in words. But it isn’t the words, is it? It is all of it. This man’s magic lies in the buzzing air around him, the excitement he feels with exposed knees at work, the years and years of earned wisdom. It isn’t a list of questions that he has in his short pockets, but it is the skill of navigating a conversation with someone who is clearly not usually one to sit and be in the conversation.

            All of this fancy to say that he and I fought in my head recently as an old friend came to visit the conversation: Ego. Ross had just gotten done explaining a play he had written and talking it up in the most humble-brag way that made me want to shame anyone who denied the script, when he paused mid-sentence- “you know, this is a really neat thing we get to do, how often is it that people like you and people like me really get to enjoy one another?”

            People like you? Excuse me, miss thing, what trigger phrase did you just use? What do you mean people like you? What, sir, what? Blonde (fake), short (average at best), white (this one was a stretch), young (subjective), or in a lower position of power?! PEOPLE LIKE ME?! I am not sure what happened at this point because ego had sashayed her way into my head waggled her stupid little finger, clicked her tongue, and we were out. I obviously didn’t storm off but kept politely speaking to my dear friend. I let the conversation run its course and retreated to my office to roll my eyes and snapchat some sassy filtered picture of (you guessed it) how old me are no-good-lazy-don’t-understand-nothing-for-nothing-so-and-so’s. I was so irritated that he said that! People like me?! What, like I can’t talk to old men whom I barely know? Like I don’t just go around asking people their life story and listening when the speak? Like I can’t just walk up to any old man and ask him to explain his pant choice? Oh.. wait… lightbulb. People like me don’t do that and it has nothing to do with any of the things that my ego had stockpiled as evidence. It had nothing to do with my age, gender, station, status, race, or even education. It had everything to do with life and to a lesser extent society, and it is true, how often to magical people like Ross get approached in a bookstore this day and age and asked for a recommendation? How often do old men approach me asking how many languages I speak and what my plans for the next ten years are, instead of trying to get me to just smile? How often am I even afforded the opportunity to meet someone in my life that I resonate with? Not often, was the answer, Ross. Not often do people like you and people like me get to enjoy one another. Not often do I meet people who can say “where were you just then?” when they walk in on me staring off into space and genuinely care about the answer. Not often do I get the divine pleasure to speak to who will walk into my office humming a little song, tell me a quick story, and inquire about a book I had mentioned 2 months ago if I had finished. Not often do people like me allow people like him in.

            This ego trip and subsequent shame spiral for being obtuse got me thinking (we know that, Kallie, because you are writing an awful lot of words for someone with ‘nothing’ to say) about the timeline of events in our lives and the pure joy of happenstance. It is this feeling of nostalgia and the “if… then I’d never” shtick that we play on ourselves for both bad and good events but don’t attribute it to the same thing. I’m not sure what the thing to be attributed is, entropy, I guess…but it is an all too familiar feeling of living in the past but wishing for a different future. I won’t go into the multiverse theory or even talk about cyclical times yadda yadda mostly because that isn’t what this is about. This is about my ego getting in the way of my own damn self and happiness. I can be wrong about old men, I can be wrong about a sentence said in all innocence, I can be wrong. I am wrong. I hate typing that out and feel a little ill after it, but that is the long and long of it. My Ego and I have a lot of brainstorming to do with my good friend Logic and my babysitter Empathy. It isn’t often that people like me get the joy of getting to know many people, or mutually getting to know them without even knowing their middle name! It isn’t often you feel a sense of friendship or kinship with many people, and the happenstance of Ross being in my life is a whole lot of decisions leading up to working where I do.

            Now I started this post in December determined to write a post once a month this year and as I watch January slip through the hourglass at the buzzer here, I am remiss to say I don’t remember the point of this post. I do, however, remember the feeling that Ross evokes in me as I get to live it every Thursday. Just last week he strolled into my office casually asking where he could acquire a N95 mask, after I told him he stopped in my door frame as if examine it and told me “You know, I think you should write” (I shit you not). I asked what about with a wry smile knowing what I had on my desktop currently. He waggled his finger at me and said, “It’s not my place to tell Kallie who to be”.