Two recent interactions with coworkers...

 ...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) After the (husband) boss accidentally added meat to a vegetarian dish and messed up the order when he was helping out in the kitchen for some reason, I grabbed that and ate it as my staff meal for that shift.

And, later, I told my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, "This is important, to get the boss to like you -- eat his mistakes!".

(She liked that.)

2) There's this one (new) (taller) (Thai) coworker, parts of whose facial structure strangely resembles my one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, to the point where if I see her out of the corner of my eye at a certain angle, I viscerally confuse them.

And, when I was doing some word searches that my mother cuts out of the newspaper and mails me so that I have something to do during downtime at work, she asked me what it was and I showed her, and she helped me out with the word search.

And, later, I showed her how in that particular puzzle type the leftover letters spell out a word with the same theme.

"Oh!", she was like, and she had this look of just utter pleasure on her face, like that was the best thing ever.

Memory tidbits:

1) I once heard the response "God's going to get you for that," and I was quite taken with it (and why wouldn't you be?!).

2) Way back ages ago at the resthome where I used to work at, the one (older) (West African) lady from (Ghana) was telling me about how she did a big holiday weekend barbecue with all her family and friends, and so I asked her what they made. Basically, it was some kind of spinach dish, and jollof rice, and a bunch of different meat, and that was how they barbecued.

Addendum.

One thing I used to do occasionally with my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker from the resthome where I used to work at is joke that she was a cat burglar art thief who was going to go sneak into museums and pilfer masterworks after she got off of shift.

(For some reason after she changed out of her workclothes at the end of shift and we would all wait for the clock to turn to a certain number so we could clock out, she almost always wore a completely black outfit, like very dark black pants and a tight-fitting very dark long-sleeved t-shirt with a high-ish almost turtleneck-like neck.)

"No, I am going home," she would say to me.

"See, that's your alibi," I would be like, and she would just go "Eh!" and make a swatting gesture with her hand at me.

One time she also broke down her jigsaw puzzle tips for me, on what you do when you're stuck: you have to switch what your eyes see and group by color, or look for very specific edges.

She was very intense and driven like that.

. . .

(Her memory really is a blessing.)

Two deaths:

1) Where I live now in the college town that I now live in, I was going to go get my mail from out front and I saw across the street a(n older) (shorter) (fatter) (white) woman with (big) (frizzy) (pulled-back) (grey) hair going up to the steps of the house of the one (aging) (hippie), and so I called out and over and asked her if everything is okay, since I hadn’t seen her in a while.

“She passed in January,” she was like, and she walked over and talked a little, and she said that it was all very sudden and all very odd, she had a spot on her chest that didn’t look like anything, but it had dug in back behind and become sepsis, and there was no going back from that.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I was like, and I said how I had opened a bottle for her once when she saw me out reading and walked up the driveway and asked me to do so – “Thank you for helping her out,” the woman was like – and I said that I hoped that it wasn’t too much pain for her – it wasn’t – and that I always saw people over there and it seemed like she had a good team around her.

“She did,” the woman said, just staring up at me with this broad smiling face, lost in her thoughts.

. . .

2) Right after I moved from the city that I used to live in, I got an email from the one retired school nurse at the resthome, that my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t breathe and went to the doctor’s, and it was pancreatic cancer that had spread and was advanced and was interfering with the musculature around her chest that helps her to breathe.

And, she had said that she had wanted to work as long as she could, but already within a week she was at home, and she wasn’t able to work again but all the workers had taken up a list and gathered money for her and they had sent that along, and of course I said that if they did that again, to let me know, since I’d also send some money, and even if it was going in right away and someone had to contribute money for me and cover me that way, I could send a check or something to them later and pay them back as soon as I could, though no-one ever did.

(I'm not sure if they ever took up another collection.)

Since she also checked and the resthome could forward a card for me, I sent one, something "Thinking of You" and a little lighthearted about how I was doing and how I had heard the news and had thought of her and I think of her every time that I do jigsaw puzzles, since we both liked them and we got yelled at once for doing one in the resthome common room to the point where we did too much of one once one late evening and a resident had noticed the next morning when she got up and so she snitched on us and word got back to the nurse in charge of our unit and she had to say something to everyone, though I think she knew that it was just the two of us.

And, that made me feel better, knowing that I had put that energy out into the universe there at a very, very bad time.

Then, like two months later, the card came back in the mail to me, with a big official and threatening- and definitive-looking bleeding dark red ink mark on its pastel yellow envelope, no known occupant and no known address and that it was unable to be forwarded.

And, immediately I thought that something must have happened with her money and her insurance and her apartment, and she had had to move back to her family village in (Mexico) for end-of-life care or whatever, and that it was a private tragedy that happened quickly and no-one knew of, so of course I said nothing to the retired school nurse or to anyone at all.

Then, a few weeks beyond that, I get another email from the retired school nurse, and it was the news that she had passed, and she knew that week that she was going to pass, so she took the time to cook this special peanut candy for everyone and had sent it in with her (diabetic) (American) husband who she had met through taking care of his mother years ago, though she couldn’t come in person to give the candy to everyone, it was already too late for that.

That was her way of saying goodbye, and, as it turned out, the forwarded card situation had merely been a mistake, fortunately, though I was never able to talk to her again, even though I had reached out, and I really don’t remember the last time that I saw her.

That Thanksgiving when they gave out the turkeys and trimmings to all the staff like they had started to do during the first year of the pandemic, they did so in her memory.

And, that was how she died.

Everyone thinks it was too soon.

. . .

Memories of a daytrip in the city that I used to live in, before I moved.

When my one (art school) colleague who wears (women’s) clothes was living in a temporary apartment in an odd part of town in the city that I used to live in and the pandemic was just letting up and many people were vaccinated, we were going to go do dinner with a group at a (Bulgarian) restaurant that he had gone to and was crowing about, so I went out very very early, to go to a (somewhat nearby) (local) (Marian) shrine that I had always heard about but had never got around to going to, ever.

The giftshop was closed, unfortunately, and one of the major churches was closed for wedding practice for some (Latino) family, where the bride was in the aisle doing something when I went up and saw the sign on the door.

In one section by a big outdoor devotional statue, too, many of the fundraising bricks with people’s names on them were from (presumably local) (Italians), going by their first and last names, though that version of the Virgin Mary was definitely not from their or their families's part of the world, it must have been something that they just did in order to honor the Virgin Mary however they could.

Also, at the back of the big outdoor shrine there was a(n entirely empty) small outdoor chapel tucked away with benches, and all around it were just tens and maybe hundreds of pinned photographs of people who’d been helped, and flowers and all of these flaming candles and like crutches and stuff like that, with so many candles alight and just no-one there at all, though you had all of the people's faces on the photographs.

. . .

(Later that night at dinner when everyone was saying how good the food was, my one [art school] colleague who wears [women's] clothes said that he had actually gone there with a friend very randomly when they were both really stoned and walking by and and he didn't even remember telling any other people about the restaurant at all, so the entire night he was really worried that the food wouldn't be any good at all, since he wasn't sure if it was. He said he felt very, very relieved, that the food was so good, given how much we said he had talked about it.)

Remembered banter with a (gay) (Brazilian).

I forgot --

This summer when I was at a local brewery in a different part of town with that one (gay) (Brazilian) visiting student in (STEM), he was asking the bartender what this one beer that wasn't on the list was like, and the bartender was like, "Dark and strong."

"Like you," I cooed, as I put my arm around him and felt his arm muscle.

. . .

(He's Afro-Brazilian.)

. . .

(He reminded me of that joke in an email a bit ago, he seemed to have enjoyed it. Another time when he had a bunch of [Brazilians] and a few other people over for lunch, which I guess is something that [Brazilians] do to socialize, there was something someone brought that had a bunch of adjectives on the label like dark sweet etc., and I had also used that occasion to make some similar joke, which is what he actually referred to in the email.)

A coworker backstory, of evenings and weekends.

Like last month at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, the (husband) owner scheduled me on a night that I had specifically requested off so I could go to a local (classical music) concert, and so I began asking around among my coworkers to see if anyone could cover for me.

And, my one (very tall) (very skinny) (just graduated from high school) (Mexican-American) coworker said he couldn't, since he was going to a house show.

"Are you in a band or something?", I was like.

And, it turns out that he isn't, but his (quiet) (very pale skinned) (very dark haired) girlfriend who likes my jokes is, and sings punk.

"Does she like scream and hurt her vocal cords or is she all like sweet and menacing?", I was like, and he said a mix.

I also kind of raised the L7 tampon-throwing incident -- "I've heard of that!", he was like -- and I said that that's what I think of, when I think of women in punk bands.

And, he said that the most that's happened is that his girlfriend threw him into the mosh pit, and from there he got thrown into a microphone stand.

"Like she wanted you to get thrown into something, so she arranged for it to happen?", I was like.

"No, it was just something that happened," he was like.

"I wouldn't be so sure," I was like. "Sometimes relationships can be passive-aggressive like that."