More room for babies and laundry

I bought a new bed this weekend. Mom talked me into a queen size, so that I have a vast plain of empty space surrounding me, reminding me of the infinitude of the cosmos and my loneliness, alas, alack. Actually, I find it is rather embarrassing to buy a bed with your mother, especially when the only salesman in the store is a 27-year-old Italian (or so he looked) dude with Cal Ripken eyes. Puts everything in a different context. So when I said, “I really don’t need a queen, mom,” and she responded with, “You’ll want it in the future! More room for the baby!” I hope I didn’t look too mortified.
The salesman was an extrovert. People like that scare me, but they’re usually also the only kind that get me out of my shell (for obvious reasons). I’m an extrovert when I’m in a room full of people I know well and who respect me (it also helps for them to be shouting gratuitous praise at me or chanting my name), but who isn’t? The salesman agreed with my mother when she was giving me another, more innocuous reason for buying a queen. All he said was, “You never know!” which vaguely disturbed me. But the thing that really disturbed me, after all this was over, was that I realized that I knew everything about the salesman. I knew how old he was, where he went to college, what his major was, that he has friends making six figures but he’s not even a third of the way there yet, his shoe size, his philosophy on life and love. Most of this was because he and Mom were talking while I was hiding under the beds and jumping on the couches (there’s nothing like shopping with your parents to make you feel young again). When we first came in the store, the salesman asked me if I was buying a bed for college. I said, casually, “No, no, I’m out of college,” and was about to go on and say something else when he blurted out, “Out of college? How old are you?” I just squeezed out the answer, 23, when he put up his hands and started to laugh and apologized for being too outgoing. Don’t apologize, buddy. Being outgoing means you never have to say you’re sorry.

When we finally left, my mother gave me one of her sidelong glances and smiled and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy called you up for a date.” (He now has both my home phone and my cell phone on his copy of the purchase order, making any action on his part to call me totally creepy.) I made a face and said that I doubted it, considering he thought I was in high school. On the drive home, I complained to my mother that my only social interaction (i.e. with guys) outside of contact with old Bardies who are either totally unavailable or totally uninterested is nil. That I see maybe ten good-looking guys a day, but they’re all STUDENTS at this damn college and probably just as jerky as every other student I was interested in while I was a student here.

I wish that salesman would call me, creepy as it would be. At least he has no affiliation with Bard. At least he’s not 19. I mean, he did sell me a queen-size bed. I’m totally in like Flynn.