I've been slow to post lately and there is a lot going through my head. But, between being constantly busy with life and death and just generally trying to deal with things I haven't really been able to put finger to keyboard properly and be coherent.
However, I had to share.
I'm at work recently. The other day, the other week. The other something. Time just kind of bleeds right now.
But I'm at work and this older lady comes into my department and is looking at options to replace her flooring. (by the way, I'm typing on a chromebook that I don't usually use and the keyboard is smaller and thus the keystrokes aren't exactly where I am used to them being. If you catch mistakes, especially in spelling, it is because I either missed that correction or I just didn't care to keep fixing them).
This lady is older and italian. She is telling me about certain things she wants to do and that she has had quotes from other companies over the past 5 years. She is going into details I don't care to know but is also giving me good information so that I can help lead her to something maybe she would be happy with.
However, she goes into this story about how she had a flooring quote and a window quote. The window quote, from a company I have no affiliation with, came back at like 50 grand or higher. She is explaining how the guys giving the quote are trying to convince her to drop 50k because they work on expensive, multi-million dollar homes and those quotes are higher. She says that "my house is 250k, why in the hell would I put 50k worth of windows into a 250k home, it makes no sense to drop that much money.
As she is talking and relaying this story she gets to the point where she turns the crew down and tells them that it is too expensive and she is not interested.
She looks at me and says, "You know, why the hell do they think my little house should put that much money worth of windows into it. Bafangool!"
I pause.
I smile.
My eyes water.
I don't know if she caught it, if she ignored it, whatever. All I know is that I'm having a good day and enjoying random conversations with strangers at work and this lady drops a Bafangool on me, out of nowhere.
In all of my years, 47 of them now, I have now only run across two people who I have ever heard utter this phrase.
The first was my dad. He used it a lot when I was in my middle school and high school years. It was just a common expression from him.
Now, here I am, weeks after his passing and some random lady enters my life and drops a random Bafangool on me and shortly later just disappears to go off and think about what she wants to do, probably never to be seen again (by me - no one murdered her, no need to look into it).
I've come a long way from my younger years when I thought I was an athiest and now realize that I'm probably just agnostic. I don't know what I believe in or where life is actually headed.
But, one thing I am one thousand percent sure of is that through this random encounter my Old Man was telling me that everything is going to be alright and to lighten the fuck up. Life is too short to waste it on being unhappy.
Bafangool indeed, dad, Bafangool!
I honestly needed that.
