a loud basket of strawberries
When people say actions speak louder than words, it could very well mean that in addition to body language, there is "action" language. Not those verbs your high school English teacher taught you to incorporate into your AP exam essay but the gestures we make towards our fellow man which serve as an unspoken vocabulary of good will or sometimes bad will. Bush never said "I don't like your country and find it appropriate to exploit you" to Iraq, he just started a war with Iraq. This would be an example of bad will. Possible registered Democratic political assassins not snipering Bush's ass while he shakes hands with a homeless man in Detroit for publicity, good will. Maybe the deeds aren't as grand as a war but we speak through what we do. Like any language, those who are fluent in the same actions understand each other better than other non-similar-action speakers.
There is an Indian gentleman who caters in-house Happy Hour in a conference room at my office. His name is Tony. (As an aside, every Friday afternoon at 4:58pm, as he was setting out bowls of guacamole and shrimp cocktail, Val would be one of the first people in line for an alcoholic beverage and fried hors d'oeurves with her eyebrows in their permanent furrow. "Boy, do I need one of these!" she'd say minutes later, waving around a glistening Corona with her hand while the other held a plate already piled high with complimentary fried cheese.) When he's done setting out the platters of food, he always pours a glass of white wine and walks it out to Elizabeth. I doubt she has some sort of executive arrangement. Tony does this because this is how he shows that he likes a person. It's what I understand because it's what I do too. If I were to speak a different action language, maybe I could interpret Tony's glass of wine as a lecherous or nefarious move. Perhaps he wants to get Elizabeth liquored up so they can sneak into the janitor's closet and have a quick snog. As in any spoken language, it's not what you say but how you say it. When Tony walks into her office with the glass of wine, he smiles and hands it to her. They exchange pleasantries and then join the congregation in the conference room. He doesn't saunter in, unbuttoning his shirt and holding the glass up to her lips while she sips it demurely as he murmurs "I want you against the filing cabinet you sexy bitch with your Ann Taylor slacks and your Jones New York blouse." No, Tony is a kind man. Last year, I found out that his father had passed away and we had not gotten our catered Happy Hour as scheduled because Tony had taken a leave of bereavement. When he returned to work, I gave him my condolences in the hallway. He told me how much he had loved his father and his eyes welled up with tears. Only a caring man would be thus affected. I liked him even more that day.
Along with the assorted savories, Tony serves a cheese platter with some of the most amazing fruit I've had outside of Canada. He scares up the best produce from suppliers and vendors around town, companies who only sell their wares to restaurants. One Friday afternoon, he was walking past my cubicle when I stopped him to ask if I could buy strawberries like the ones he brought. He told me that they were not available to the general public and we chatted for a while about fruits and vegetables. He displayed a passion for cooking that I had never been privy to before. I liked him even more more that day. We finished our conversation and he said that he would bring me a few strawberries the following week. I thanked him and probably went back to sending perverted IMs to the boyfriend. I had put it out of my mind but Friday rolled around in its usual delayed fashion and Tony appeared next to the partition of my cubicle.
"I brought you something," he said in his English accented with a dash of Hindi. He produced a small green basket of beautiful strawberries safely protected by a swathe of plastic wrap. It was not merely a basket of strawberries, the value of which was probably $2. It was the culmination of a string of thoughts and actions, all manifested in a basket of strawberries. It represented his remembrance of my inquiry, the designation of a particular basket for me, the wrapping of the berries in plastic and their transportation to my desk. Of course, maybe I was another supply closet conquest but because I think we speak the same language I knew that "strawberries" meant "friend." I replied to him with a verbal thank you and a week later a thank you of Oro Blanco grapefruits which I had gotten from a Korean supermarket. They were the sweetest I could find. Sweet enough for Tony.
Brother once said to me that if a man likes chicken soup and you give him 10 cans of tomato soup, he would probably find you annoying. But give him one can of chicken soup and he'd appreciate it immensely. I thought he was angry I had used a can of his chicken soup but, I realize now that he meant this in terms of a friendship. We are pretty much alone in this world. We are single bodies with single minds and we exist in the spectrum of our very specific, very tailored understanding. When we find someone else who interprets our behaviors in the same way we interpret ourselves, we call them a "friend" and feel less solitary. It is the giggling box of cupcakes I bake for An's housewarming. It is the petulant arguments we have when someone cuts us off. It is the boyfriend's whispered kiss in the middle of the night and a loud basket of strawberries on a Friday afternoon.
There is an Indian gentleman who caters in-house Happy Hour in a conference room at my office. His name is Tony. (As an aside, every Friday afternoon at 4:58pm, as he was setting out bowls of guacamole and shrimp cocktail, Val would be one of the first people in line for an alcoholic beverage and fried hors d'oeurves with her eyebrows in their permanent furrow. "Boy, do I need one of these!" she'd say minutes later, waving around a glistening Corona with her hand while the other held a plate already piled high with complimentary fried cheese.) When he's done setting out the platters of food, he always pours a glass of white wine and walks it out to Elizabeth. I doubt she has some sort of executive arrangement. Tony does this because this is how he shows that he likes a person. It's what I understand because it's what I do too. If I were to speak a different action language, maybe I could interpret Tony's glass of wine as a lecherous or nefarious move. Perhaps he wants to get Elizabeth liquored up so they can sneak into the janitor's closet and have a quick snog. As in any spoken language, it's not what you say but how you say it. When Tony walks into her office with the glass of wine, he smiles and hands it to her. They exchange pleasantries and then join the congregation in the conference room. He doesn't saunter in, unbuttoning his shirt and holding the glass up to her lips while she sips it demurely as he murmurs "I want you against the filing cabinet you sexy bitch with your Ann Taylor slacks and your Jones New York blouse." No, Tony is a kind man. Last year, I found out that his father had passed away and we had not gotten our catered Happy Hour as scheduled because Tony had taken a leave of bereavement. When he returned to work, I gave him my condolences in the hallway. He told me how much he had loved his father and his eyes welled up with tears. Only a caring man would be thus affected. I liked him even more that day.
Along with the assorted savories, Tony serves a cheese platter with some of the most amazing fruit I've had outside of Canada. He scares up the best produce from suppliers and vendors around town, companies who only sell their wares to restaurants. One Friday afternoon, he was walking past my cubicle when I stopped him to ask if I could buy strawberries like the ones he brought. He told me that they were not available to the general public and we chatted for a while about fruits and vegetables. He displayed a passion for cooking that I had never been privy to before. I liked him even more more that day. We finished our conversation and he said that he would bring me a few strawberries the following week. I thanked him and probably went back to sending perverted IMs to the boyfriend. I had put it out of my mind but Friday rolled around in its usual delayed fashion and Tony appeared next to the partition of my cubicle.
"I brought you something," he said in his English accented with a dash of Hindi. He produced a small green basket of beautiful strawberries safely protected by a swathe of plastic wrap. It was not merely a basket of strawberries, the value of which was probably $2. It was the culmination of a string of thoughts and actions, all manifested in a basket of strawberries. It represented his remembrance of my inquiry, the designation of a particular basket for me, the wrapping of the berries in plastic and their transportation to my desk. Of course, maybe I was another supply closet conquest but because I think we speak the same language I knew that "strawberries" meant "friend." I replied to him with a verbal thank you and a week later a thank you of Oro Blanco grapefruits which I had gotten from a Korean supermarket. They were the sweetest I could find. Sweet enough for Tony.
Brother once said to me that if a man likes chicken soup and you give him 10 cans of tomato soup, he would probably find you annoying. But give him one can of chicken soup and he'd appreciate it immensely. I thought he was angry I had used a can of his chicken soup but, I realize now that he meant this in terms of a friendship. We are pretty much alone in this world. We are single bodies with single minds and we exist in the spectrum of our very specific, very tailored understanding. When we find someone else who interprets our behaviors in the same way we interpret ourselves, we call them a "friend" and feel less solitary. It is the giggling box of cupcakes I bake for An's housewarming. It is the petulant arguments we have when someone cuts us off. It is the boyfriend's whispered kiss in the middle of the night and a loud basket of strawberries on a Friday afternoon.
posted by Katie at 6:47 AM
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