Shower Power

I haven’t put up a post in awhile because nothing extremely interesting has really happened lately. I am stuck in the cycle of doing math problems all day, every day.

But, nonetheless, something amusing is bound to happen every once in awhile. Last week, as I was sitting outside enjoying the sun for a few minutes between classes, this man begins to make small talk with me. Basically, the just of the story is that his name is Fred and he is a plumber on campus. He spends most of the time underground among the mazelike complex of pipes that keep SU flowing. I also learned that he has a daughter around my age, who didn’t get into the grad school she wanted, so she is working as a telemarketer, yet the bank is willing to lend her $50,000. In addition, Fred and his wife have been married for over twenty years, and after about twenty years of not keeping the family’s financial books, Fred is taking over the reigns. So, I have a new friend on campus that isn’t a member of the Economics department. Yay!

This morning, as I was leaving the gym I saw Fred, so I decided to say hello. Well, he returned the greeting, but then asked, “Do you mind if I ask you a semi-personal question?” Well, I was sort of sketched out by this maybe early 50s, still sort of a stranger asking me anything personal, but I said okay anyways. Fred looks at me and says, “How was your shower this morning?” Of course the first word that rushed to my head was not “plumber” but “pervert”. I was searching for a way to answer this question, and muttered very practically, “It was good,” not wanting Fred to conjure up any images of me in my natural state of existence. Well after my curt response Fred responded, “No, I mean like how was the water flow and pressure?” After all, he is a plumber.