Fawnorrhea

A dozen years ago I worked as a telephone operator at a hotel with a woman named Fawn Areolla. Yes, similar to the circle around a nipple. Some of the front desk clerks nick named her Fawnorrhea, which only made the name thing worse. One clerk in particular would refer to her as Fawnorreha Gonorrhea Diarrhea Areolla. Say it out loud, it’s fun.

Saying Fawn was something of a character would be a gross understatement. She loved to tell stories about herself and had no shame or discretion whatsoever. A typical Fawn story is this one: “One time when I was twelve I was babysitting and ran out of cigarettes. The father of the kids smoked a pipe so I got the bright idea of rolling my own cigarette using pipe tobacco and toilet paper. When I lit the toilet paper it burned so fast it was like ‘poof’ and I singed my eyebrows. Ha Ha!”

She once asked me to edit a singles ad for her and I had to explain that 5XDWF was not necessary. A simple D took care of the 5 Xs.

I loved these stories, although I did feel a little guilty about feeling so superior to her after hearing them. I was young so I can blame it on that, but there was still a little guilt. I don’t think I ever hurt her feelings but I do remember asking her all the time to tell me another story and I was always entertained by the hilarious but sometimes pathetic existence of my coworker.

Flash forward to a week ago. I ran across Fawn at the Wal-Mart (okay, who am I to feel superior to anyone – I'm shopping at Wal-Mart). I gave her a big hug and we chatted for a few minutes. She’d noticeably had a stroke because she needed extra time to formulate words from time to time (all that smoking) but was in good spirits and looked fairly healthy otherwise. We traded personal histories since the hotel days and I told her that I had gotten married.

She gave me a funny look and said “you remember what I used to say to you?” Baffled, I said that I couldn’t remember anything in particular that jumped into mind. She leaned in conspiratorially and said “you used to have those spots all over your face and I said that you needed to get laid for them to go away. Look now - no spots. Ha Ha!)

I no longer felt guilt. She had thought of me as that pimply faced kid who wasn't getting laid (guilty) which seemed a fair trade for my thoughts about her at the time. We laughed it all away and promised to email. I immediately lost her email address (I swear) so maybe it'll have to be another Wal-Mart encounter before I see her again. I wish her well.

Bless you, Fawn. You’ll never change and the world is a more interesting place because of it.