Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Bridge to Bain

First of all, the other day, I was sitting out in public, minding my own business, and this random dude says to me...

Him: What's your name?
Me: (I tell him my first name).
Him: What is that...Indian?
Me: Well, it's Hindi, yes.
Him: I was given the Indian name Suresh.
Me: HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Him: Oh. I guess that means that you don't care.

Isn't that a weird conversation? I am not one to just bust out laughing in people's faces when they are talking to me. Ok maybe I am a little. But especially when it's something like THAT. His Indian name? This ain't no Dances with Wolves, Mister. My kind of Indian? We don't bestow names on people like that. Can you imagine? "Ah, yes Nordic Boy. You have brought my household honor. Henceforth, I shall knight you...Deepak." hahahahahaha. (That, by the way, might only be a joke that's funny if you're Indian. So hi, four Indian readers, that one was for you.) It just don't work that way with us. You have to be born in to get one of our names. Ooh la la, we are so keeping the names behind the velvet rope. And then? The response to the laughing? "I guess that means you don't care." What a funny thing to say. It made me laugh more.

He probably thought I was touched in the head. Which, let's face it.

Second of all, I have been staying up way too late this week, watching tivo'd speeches from the Democratic Convention. What a nerd. A sleepy, sleepy nerd.

Third of all, last weekend I realized that the sunny, warm, perfect Seattle summer days, they are numbered. It is dead summer walking. So BioGirl and I, we decided to get out there and enjoy it goddammit.

We got on a ferry boat and rode a half hour across the Sound to get to an island, just to go somewhere different for lunch. The island we went to was Bainbridge. It's very difficult for me to go to Bainbridge Island without singing the Ben Bridge jingle, by the way. Instead of the "diamond people" I sing the "island people." I is so clever I should have my own reality show, shouldn't I? I could never live on Bainbridge or else I would be singing that jingle all the livelong day. On the way there, we had a serious discussion about how, if you were a doctor like McDreamy, you could really live across the Sound and be expected to get to work if there was a dire emergency. Like you are really going to be hopping the ferry boat back and forth when people need their skullmeats worked on, right? There are lots of islands in the Puget Sound, and Bainbridge is the most accessible by ferry, so we figured of all the places McDreamy supposedly lives, it's got to be Bainbridge. We decided he must have an apartment in town too or something, because it's just not practical. Let's just put aside the fact that he is a fictional character and that we are mainly really annoyed by that show in general for many reasons, too numerous to go into here, and we just may have a point, don't you think?

Anyway. As we wrestled with these great questions of our times, we wandered through the ferry...

ferry window

and then out on the deck, where we discovered that we were in a ferry Nascar (Nasferry?) race with another boat right next to us...

ferry race 1

and we said goodbye to our city...
escape city 1

and hello to an island where fancy people live...
hello island 2

where we ate at a restaurant that was suspiciously full of only women customers...
cafe nola
no dudes allowed?

Walked around, and spent a little money on our respective favorite things (BioGirl got an ice cream cone, and I bought a dress from Sweet Deal).

And then headed home.
bye bye island

And on the way home, we sat in the ferry, and looked out through the window to the deck at the people...

ppl on ferry

and made up imaginary conversations that these people might have been having with each other. It was like a silent film where we provided the dialogue. A very snarky silent film.

Her: If only we could get paid for this.
Me: What?
Her: Like, I wish it could be our job to sit behind a glass and watch people, and like, make up dialogue for them.
Me: Huh?
Her: We're so good at it. We're funny.
Me: Would it have to be us sitting behind glass?
Her: Well, yeah.
Me: That's the part that I'm not sure about.
Her: I love that THAT'S the part of the plan that you're not sure about.

I'm out,
Librarian Girl

10 comments:

Sarah said...

I love the ferries up there--it's one of my favorite things about visiting my grandparents (aside from actually visiting my grandparents, of course). I'm betting you were racing the ferry to Bremerton--another place McDream could live?

And to be a complete ferry nerd, which boat were you on? The old ones were the Walla Walla and the Spokane, but I can never remember the names of the new ones. As a kid, I used to keep track of which one I rode more. :D

Librarian Girl said...

It was the Tacoma on the way there, and the Wenatchee on the way back!

cadiz12 said...

as one of the Indian readers, i can attest that "deepak" is hilarious. mostly because i now picture Nordic Boy peering down from the hole in the roof with the same bushy-yet-well-groomed mustache that this Deepak Uncle i know has. it's a quite the facial-hair specimen, so i mean that as a compliment.

deepak. ha ha. i'll be chuckling about that all day.

Jan Ross said...

Wow, you are getting QUITE GOOD at photographing your little adventures, aren't you.

And, rereading that. It sounds a trifle patronizing.

Didn't mean it that way.

TMC said...

I loved riding the ferries up there! I used to live on Orcas Island. Going "to the mainland" was always exciting... how many low-end discount retailers could we visit in one day?! :)

Anonymous said...

it's so cool to be indian these days. you must have crushed poor "suresh's" little dream.

my bf used to commute on the ferries. he has all sorts of funny stories about the fellow passengers - like the kid who sang a song about "stinky butts" and the man who insisted on doing tai chi on the front deck every day getting in the way of people's views of the city.

Anonymous said...

We took the ferry to Bainbridge when we were there on our honeymoon. It was way cool!

I want an Indian name. Can I convert?

I really hate Grey's Anatomy.

Dallas Diaries said...

you KNEW I was gonna comment on this!

I once knew a guy named Deepak. Only he was born with that name. HAH! I get asked what the meaning of my name is. Oh so intrigued, they are. Finally I stopped telling the truth and started making things up.

The last time, I told them my mom met a hooker and fell in love with her name and named me that same name.

So intrigued, they still were.

Anonymous said...

What he meant was that he was given the name "Suresh" by the people he plays his "Heroes" role-playing game with. And you totally mocked his geekiness.

Anonymous said...

Whenever I tell someone my name, they're always like, "What kind of name is that?" Then I tell them that it is a Finnish name and they're always like, "What does it mean?" Really? It's A NAME. When I tell them that, they respond, "yeah, but what does it MEAN?" ARGH!!! When they go to other countries and introduce themselves as "Mary," do they get asked "What does it mean...no really, what does it MEAN?" It drives me crazy.