Short Story

Nothing in Common

A Simple Story #4 — Life is Short

You probably remember me and Calaif from this series. We call ourselves #NothingInCommon.

You may also recall that by day, he is a mild mannered door to door green solar energy salesperson.

He also does not have a car. Or a driver’s license. Though he’s working on that.

He has this fancy software that looks for likely neighborhoods that might be receptive to changing their energy supplier to solar.

We have some amazing new solar farms now, here in New York.

It’s not easy to do door-to-door sales work, but he keeps it positive, and is a very friendly salesperson with a big heart and a lot of good information to share.

Each morning, we get into the car, and I give him a ride to his neighborhoods. We sit at the end of my driveway, and negotiate who’s going to plug the address into whose smart device to get gps directions. I typically plug it in. My phone seems to have better directions. But I always have to wait for him to remember that he needs to TELL ME the address. Some days I wait longer than others. For him to remember. Then we just sit there for 5 minutes until he wonders why the car isn’t moving.

I go clean my AirBnB houses, and he knocks on doors.

I pick him up when he’s finished.

I live at the top of a very long steep hill. I basically own a road. We also give our garbage a lift. To the cans at the bottom of the hill, at the end of the road.

This particular morning, we threw the garbage, and our technology for work, into the car, got in and slowly drove down the wet, leaf covered road. It’s autumn here in New York. Rain and leaves are like ice.

Arriving safely at the bottom, we do the garbage dance. One of us makes the motion to get out and take the garbage out of the trunk, and place it in the can.

It’s not a race exactly to be first. It’s more like a dance…. to see who wants to lead that day.

This morning, Calaif won the lead, so as he was out dealing with garbage and cans, I thought, oh, I can grab a quick read of something on MuddyUm.

Sure enough, freshly published from Kristi, was this:

Oh, I thought, a 2 minute read. Perfect!

It was so fun and a perfect 2-minute-waiting-for-Calaif piece to read.

He finished with the garbage and popped back into the car.

I finished reading, giggling a little.

I sat there. Minutes ticked by. Waiting for him. To tell me the address.

“So, Calaif, where are we going?” I’m sure I sounded just a bit frustrated. Really, how many days will go by for him to remember to just tell me the address, so I know if I have to turn left or right out of the driveway? This isn’t rocket science, and it’s always the same question every day.

“TO MEXICO!” he said, excitedly.

He’s not that big of a joker, really. It was as if he clairvoyantly digested Kristi’s article.

“Wait. WHAT? NO! I’m not driving to Mexico!”

“Yeah, come on! Let’s go to Mexico!”

“What?” I started giggling.

“Yeah — we have to go! They’re building a wall there! We have to go pick up some people! Rescue them!”

I started laughing, loudly. So did he.

I continued laughing, and said, “Calaif, I think this is the next Nothing in Common episode. Listen to this.”

Then I read him Kristi’s article, out loud.

He smiled. Then he gave me the real address of where we were driving to that morning.

28 Eagle Circle.

Right off of Liberty Lane.

This is a series.

And so are these:

© Susan Brearley, 2019 All Rights Reserved

Susan Brearley is a brilliant strategist, a published book author, writer, seasoned editor, essayist, occasional comedy writer, and an accidental poet. She is currently working on her second book, a murder mystery about an OCD detective, who’s been called a “young version of Monk”. She’s a retired systems engineer and salesperson from IBM, a serial entrepreneur, and a survivor of a stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer since 1995. She’s also working on her US Coast Guard Captain’s license, has her US Sailing keelboat certification, and is the creator and elder teacher of a new program, “VisionQuest” that mentors and teaches adults of all ages how to create the life they were born to live. She is currently based in the mid-Hudson Valley, New York.