‘My goodness, you’re tall’, he said while reaching across the table length for a cocktail napkin. ‘I mean tall in a good way…I mean’. He faltered slightly.
‘Thank you’, she replied. ‘I work hard at it’. He looked at her. ‘Work hard at what?’ He seemed puzzled. ‘At being tall’, she countered, reaching for her own napkin. ‘I work hard at being tall’.
He looked down sheepishly at his plate and spent what felt to him to be an inordinate amount of time working out the pattern of food spread in front of him. Dip, chips, min-sandwich, over priced crackers, non-descript glob of cheese spread; looking up shyly, he tried again.
‘So, what do you do?’ She turned slightly to the left of him and glanced out over his shoulder at nothing. ‘I work hard at being tall’, she said. ‘I work very hard’.
It was the sort of conversation which at the root of things, found itself rather far down the twisting rabbit trail of ‘I’d rather be anywhere else but here’.
She announced, ‘Perhaps today I shall learn to fly or to spin sugar webs’. She opted for flight, and in her mind she was already gone…
690 Saint Paul 