Married to the Mime
How often do you think about mimes? That's a rhetorical question. There was a cute guy on the subway today sitting a seat away from me. His nose was buried in a big hardcover. He had that semblance of a beard that's very popular today, and longish, jet black hair. Since he was completely oblivious to his surroundings, intensely focused on the page, I felt free to stare at him and imagine him without any pants. That's not creepy, right?
When he realized we were nearing his stop he closed his reading material abruptly. As he stuffed the book in his messenger bag I could see the title. The book was called The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre. (Naturally, in my mind, theatre was to be read as THEAH-TAH.) The cover featured what looked to me like a photograph of a mime on an empty stage in full clown face. At that moment I was one of those people on the subway you see laughing for seemingly no reason. I wondered which chapter he was on. Stuck in a Box? Scaling a Wall? Walking Through a Wind Tunnel? Then I remembered sitting at the kitchen table when I was little, with a mouthful of chocolate milk, watching The Shields and Yarnell Show in my pink footie pajamas that swished whenever I walked across the linoleum floor.
This means something. I think today I found my husband. I am off the market. Please forward. I have to go post a missed connections ad on Craig's List. For the young thespian and aspiring mime. And future man of the house in a silk robe and ascot with pipe. He's really good at doing the robot and not blinking for a long time. (I have found, by the way, that the robot and the not blinking are skills which are not only artistic, but they can be quite useful in getting out of sticky situations, which a lot of people who aren't Theatre types, like Clownie and me, don't realize.)
