Carmen’s Chatter

Today I had lunch with my very good friend Gary Davis. Gary is the Postmaster at Shorter College. He is just past thirty in spirit and just past seventy in actual birthdays. Gary is one of my very best friends. We go to lunch. I bring my usual twenty-dollar bill. I call ahead: “Gary,” I say. “Can you go to lunch today, and can I treat you?” “Yes,” he says in his wonderful Southern accent, “I’d love to go, and, no, you can’t treat me.”

I take my twenty anyway. Once in the post office, I show him my twenty. Gary says, “I have too many lunches on my pre-paid card. You have to help me use them up.”

This scenario is kind of like the ever-repeating plot in that great movie, Groundhog Day. I have not yet succeeded in the last several years in paying for Gary’s lunch, but I keep trying.

We mostly laugh through lunch. I cannot report what we discuss. It is top secret. By that I mean that it is too funny, and sometimes funny doesn’t translate well onto the written page.

I will say this. You’d have to be there.

Gary is also an Anglophile. So today I was telling him how my son, John, who’s nine, loves the Jeeves and Wooster video series. Of course, my husband and I think this makes our son a genius because there is no indicator of intelligence better than the sophistication of a person’s humor. I mean. If you read James Joyce’s Ulysses and don’t get that it’s funny, well, the reader has totally missed the point.

Anyway, I was telling Gary how when I was studying for a year on a Fulbright that I was walking home one day from University College London when I ran into Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, filming Jeeves and Wooster. Whoa. I got them both to sign an envelope I had in my back pocket, a letter from my major professor, John Algeo, and I carefully put that prized letter somewhere that I have been unable to this day to find again. *Sigh.*

I didn’t know Hugh Laurie would go on to be the famous House.

Encounters like that happened all the time on the Fulbright. One day I was about to enter a zebra crossing when I remembered to look the OTHER way and saw a motorcade of important-looking black cars swishing by, and in the second car was Princess Diana. Whoa. Her blond hair went by in a glimpse, but it was way cool.

Another day, I was high up in the very forbiddingly Communist-looking, white and towering Senate House Library, where the books were even stacked on the floor (they had run out of space, apparently), and I was toiling away in my usual spot, head down over a notepad, taking notes for my dissertation. When all of a sudden a commotion flew up from the streets. People at tables near me threw open the windows and stuck out their heads, and I, being only human, went to the window at my table and flung it open and stuck out my head, too.

There was a colossal traffic jam below us there in downtown London, black taxis, cars of all sorts, even a few lorries, all going nowhere. That was not usual. People got out of their vehicles. They paced. They talked. They gesticulated. What was going on?

Finally, the news floated up to my Senate House window: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had retired. Seriously. The news caused a traffic jam that I saw with my own two eyes.

Another thing I would not have believed if I hadn’t seen it took place in Westminster Abbey. It was Commonwealth Day, and one of the perks of being a Fulbright Scholar at the University of London was that they gave you free tickets to amazing events. For example, you got invited to Parliament and into the House of Commons and got to see where all of the debates take place and even to rub the copper bright toe of the Churchill statue.

This day, we were invited to Westminster Abbey to participate in Commonwealth Day, which included watching Queen Elizabeth process in her full royal regalia and glittering crown down that glorious aisle.

(My husband and I had chanced to actually meet the Queen and Prince Philip when they came to London House, where my husband and I were living at the time, so I already knew I was fascinated by her; she made Sean and me feel as if she’d met no one else that day. I curtsied to her, as I’d been taught to do. She talked with us for ever such a long five minutes. I adored her. I can’t say the same for her husband, but I won’t write down why, though I do have examples which I will tell you if you buy me a cup of strong coffee with milk.)

Anyway, I was in the moment, totally absorbed in watching the Queen process down that aisle when all of a sudden a child, maybe eight, stepped in front of the Queen by a few yards, innocent camera in hand, and the entire audience gasped inaudibly. Really, that can be done. There can be such a thing as a collective inaudible gasp. I have seen it that one time.

Next, I saw a teacher plunge out of her seat towards the child, arm outstretched, mouth agape, and then the Queen did ever such a majestic gesture. She stopped processing. She stopped and just stood there in her august, sparkling royal raiments, and she raised her right hand. I saw this now. She raised her right hand towards the teacher, to say, “Stop.” Then, without saying a word the entire time, she motioned for the child to take her picture.

The child, being a child, thought that only right, and so she did. Then the Queen began processing again.

Whoa.

My buddy Gary said, “I wonder where that child is now, and what that picture looks like.”

So do I.

So the moral of this story is this. Everyone needs a very good friend like Gary Davis to have lunch with. I feel fortunate to hear his stories of his Coast Guard days, and his jokes are life-enhancing. Also, because Gary is one of the most kind-hearted people I have ever met, I learn much from him about loving others. I can’t say what, either, because he wouldn’t want his other good deeds to see the light of day, but he does tell me; rather, he mentions to me, and I gather in what he says and put them all together.

Gary Davis is one amazing person. That’s what life is all about. Meeting the Queen is a great thing and seeing her stop a Commonwealth Day procession so that a child can take her picture is another awesome thing, but having lunch with my friend Gary is the best thing of all.

Thanks, Gary.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 9:10 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.