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“Let’s face it; God has a big ego problem. Why do we always have to worship him?” -Bill Maher
Nearly 2 out of 3 Americans are overweight or obese. The pot bellies are growing, the manboobs are sagging, the tushies are inflating. The yogis would tell you there’s another place we carry weight in addition to the boobs, tush, and gut. A big ego is to the soul what excess body weight is to the human heart: very restricting. I’m proud to say I don’t have much of an ego not because I’m not open to the idea but rather because as soon as an ego attempts to rear its head, I will be confused as a woman, an old guy or a scrounging loiterer. And the universe will tuck me neatly back into my little corner.
Recently I was lucky enough to be staying at a beautiful hotel in Hawaii. Yes I was feeling good about myself and my surroundings. Perusing the lobby for coffee as do aspiring businesspeople at nice hotels, I saw a man with a security-style ear piece coming toward me. I figured he’d seen the article in the newspaper about my upcoming Yoga + Chocolate workshop. Or maybe he’d even read my column on Yahoo.
“This is a secured property,” he told me.
“Yeah I know it’s really nice,” I replied thinking he was coming over to shoot the breeze. After all, isn’t that what people do in fancy hotel lobbies?
“Can I see your room key?” he stated firmly.
I was confused.
“I need to see your room key or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
I still had it. “It” being the “scrounger” look that would cause a hotel security guard to pick me out of a crowd as a potential loiterer even though I was a hotel guest.
Mistaken identity seems to be the name of my game. Here are some other examples:
1. Woman
“Ma’m,” I heard as I felt a pat on my shoulder. I turned around to see the waitress with the Spinach Dip looking right at me. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, ah, sir,” she quickly corrected herself. The waitress soon realized, thanks to my bearded face, that I was not a woman but rather a man. This was the 3rd time that summer I’d been mistaken as a woman. I’d been going to this fancy hair salon at the Lenox Mall in Atlanta and the hairdresser went to town creating some sort of slanted bucket-bowl of hair on top of my noggin. Girls would approach me at bars not to flirt so much as to compliment my hair. It was very awkward and the hair cut was so feminine that if not for my beard, I might have been mistaken for a woman form the front side as well.
2. Old guy
Several years ago I was dating a woman in college. I was “more than a few” years out of college. I pulled up to the security gate at her heavily guarded Jesuit University to pick her up at the dorms. Figuring the security guard would open the gate and let me right in, I waved. But no. The guard got up off his lazy ass and walked out of his booth with a hearty chuckle.
“Where do you think you’re goin?”
“I’m picking up my girlfriend at the dorms.”
“Let’s see your I.D,” he said with a look on his face as if to say “you’re not goin’ anywhere bucko.”
After recording my driver’s license, registration, cell phone and address, he reluctantly let me in. Thinking back to when I was in college, I wondered what I would have thought about a guy in his thirties pulling up to the dorms to pick up one of my friends. One of two things:
a) Maybe I’d have thought: I hope I can pull that off when I’m his age
b) Maybe I’d have thought: What’s wrong with this guy and why can’t he score a girl within 10 years of his age range
3. Non-Yoga Teacher
I was in NYC taking a yoga class. We were in standing splits, a particularly challenging pose for me. But I figured my calm demeanor and stellar breathing would hint to the teacher of my 12 years of yoga experience. I heard her quickly moving my way and expected something along the lines, “Oh where do you teach?” But what she really said was, “Oh is this your first time?” It was embarrassing considering that I was on a yoga date. As you can imagine, my date looked at me as if to suggest Eddie Murphy’s famous line in his hit comedy video Delirious; “You sure you got a —-?”
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