The Bleakness

I was busy working at the bookstore the other day when I overheard some customers chatting, as one often does--innocent of intent, absent of any malicious motive. They were two women of my approximate age, which is to say in their late twenties. Since they seemed remarkable in no particular way, I had no occassion to take notice of them except that I am a bachelor of long-standing and self-effacing repute, and, unfortunately of late, taking to opportunism as a dating strategy out of sheer desparation, which means just about any female within proximity of eye- and earshot is bound to gain my attention no matter how remarkably unremarkable she may be.

One says to the other as they browse the "Da Vinci Code" display: "So, who was Da Vinci exactly?"

At this, my ears perk up. In my desparate state to find a mate, any mate, I take what any rational person would hear as an average or somewhat uneducated question and impart it with all sorts of unqualified meaning. As was the case here, I figured, 'Oh boy, a curious one! How I love those curious ones--willing to learn, and here in my bookstore to boot! Golly-gee, it must be my lucky day!' Somehow, in one fine sweep of the mind, I likened myself to Da Vinci--a polymath, a renaissance man, an artist, a man of great imagination. And I imagined, in this way, that here she was asking about me. Who was I, exactly?

"Wasn't he an artist?" said the same girl.

"Oh," replied her friend, "I don't know. He did some other stuff, too, I think...." Then, for a second, she did some deliberating in her head before finishing, "He's a weirdo."

Snap. Just like that. Leonardo Da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, inventor, civil engineer, sculptor, visionary, etc. = weirdo.

Well, if you can believe, it wasn't the worst commentary I'd overheard in the bookstore. But it was one of the more disappointing--initially, at least. Then, my disappointment soon gave way to hilarity as I chuckled aloud to myself and thought, 'Yeah, she's probably right. Da Vinci is a weirdo.'


© 2006 George Czar