I was surfing through YouTube and clicked on a video of a small panel discussion for The Fault In Our Stars with a couple of the actors and the book’s author, John Green. (Incidentally, John graduated from Kenyon the year after me and the movie is coming out sometime in June.) They were talking about the book and the movie and what not, but then someone asked the question, “How do you want to be remembered?”
That question kept bouncing around inside my head and I kind of have two answers. I know that I want to be a good person and have caring relationships with friends and family. I want to have that close network of people around me who will remember me for what I’ve tried to be, not what I oftentimes am. (It sucks to be flawed, but such is life.)
Then there’s the other part of me who has been in front of a bunch of TV cameras for a worldwide audience and the most important part thing I can remember that appeared onscreen is something I said during my exit interview: “Aside from [the beauties’] appearance, they’re really not that much different than I am.”
That struck me a few days ago when I was at the gas station. I was filling up on Pump 7 and cleaning the windows on my car when a car pulled up on the other side (which I later discovered was Pump 11). After a moment, a voice over the loudspeaker said, “Pump 11, cookies are on sale.” I didn’t know where that was, but I said, “Yay, cookies!” I heard another voice say, “They’re probably stale!” “Hey, you never know when you might need them!” “Exactly!” Then the person belonging to the other voice started walking toward the building and I stopped cleaning the windows to look at her.
She had just been in a fitness competition for Miss Minnesota and came in fifth. Very tan, very shapely and she flexed for me—her biceps were very toned compared to mine. She also revealed that she hadn’t had a cookie in a long time, but now that the competition was over… NOM NOM NOM. (Apparently, cookies seem really appetizing when you’ve spent the last few months eating large quantities of egg whites.)
I saw her again when I went inside to pay and saw that yes, she had purchased a container of cookies. “Yay, cookies!” I congratulated her again on placing fifth, then… yeah. That was it.
I won’t lie, I’m proud of not staring at her like an object. She was just in a fitness modeling competition; I imagine she’d had dozens of people analyzing her appearance for hours already that day. She may have wanted to talk about the competition and I missed the chance to have a conversation, but the likelihood of developing a long-term friendship within the span of a minute or two at a gas station isn’t likely, so I prefer what I did: light banter without staring too much. After all, aside from her appearance, she’s really not that much different than I am. Well, plus her really strong biceps, too.
