| | Yesterday i walked a humid, still tolerable afternoon into a grocer in Edmond, to deposit my paycheck at my local bank. After passing the bright market of flowers, the high school kids half bored, half empowered at their check-out lines, i strolled up to the line of folks getting their first-and-fifteenth-of-the-month on. All the same, all level at the eyes of the security cameras and faux-wood counter of the bank office, we stood clutching another half-month of food, car payments, gas swipes.
In the ensuing sheer joy of survival for another fifteen days, with the three day buffer zone of a high checking account balance ("time to buy a new record, or a new book!"), i walked to the mechanical doors, benign and intelligent enough to open for me, amiably, as i approached.
At the background noise of the candy machines, that during my childhood somehow morphed into temporary tattoo, sticker, and mini action figure machines, there were two girls, probably early middle school age. My mind on the tent sale at Randy's M and M's (5 bucks for Stranger Than Fiction!?), i was woken from the reverie by the odd sounding address of me as "hey! excuse me sir...could you tell us what this means?"
One girl held aloft a sticker of the fish used by innumerable sticker companies to fill with either Jesus, Darwin, Truth, or another easily braggable and controversial figure/idea. This fish, however was filled with the word "Icthus," in Greek letters save for the empty Theta, which looked like a big "O." Notwithstanding the lazy Greek font, i replied to them that it meant Icthus, which was the Greek word for fish (now it is Psaria, in Hellenistic Greek it is Icthus). They seemed satisfied enough to place the sticker on their bikes. I added that it stands for Jesus, and i think they understood me, though i neglected to go into the whole secret code of the early Church mythologies.
I also neglected to blabber on to them about how odd it was to pass two strangers perplexed by a long-dead language i happen to have a degree in, at a grocery store, in suburban Edmond, Oklahoma. The rest of the evening was all the more odd and compelling for it.
D.
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| | Posted 6/16/2007 8:06 PM - 49 Views - 8 eProps - 8 comments
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