While you’re not looking

A case of meet­ing strangers: Gail & Haneke

A dear, old friend once told me that I should pen down these fan­tas­ti­cal events pro­ceed­ing in this unre­lieved world we’re in. I was flat­tered but not entirely con­vinced because if they hap­pened to me then they must hap­pen to other peo­ple, ren­der­ing these inci­dents not so unique and unnec­es­sary to be told — or at least told by some­one who’s more fan­ci­ful and elo­quent. We even­tu­ally came to the agree­ment that when it occurs once more I’ll start this col­lec­tion. As it hap­pened, a month later… actu­ally, not even.

Today I skimped through a free online clas­si­fied, which lead me to catch a train almost an hour away from home. My mind jus­ti­fied it with it being Sun­day and I wanted to nut down some read­ing of Jung with­out any dis­trac­tions. At Holmes­glen sta­tion I was greeted by an approach­able girl named Gail. We had agreed to exchange $30 for her Haneke DVD col­lec­tion — A bar­gain you can’t loose. With excite­ment, I handed her the money whilst pro­claim­ing my glee and she injected with a sur­prise,
 – I don’t think I can except this.
 – Why?
Then she told me an awe­some story of win­ning it at the screen­ing of the Amer­i­can remake of Funny Games.
 – I don’t think I’ve met any­one who has won any­thing.
She pro­ceeded to tell me how dis­parate Haneke is to her taste in films.
 – And I’m tried to hav­ing his scary eyes fol­low­ing me around in my room.
She added with a smile. Then gave me my money back and explained that she can’t keep it because she won it. Was she Catholic? Not even, the Catholics I know are far from kind. I thought of ways to show her my grat­i­tude,
 – Half?
No, she wouldn’t even take half of the money. I thanked her enthusiastically.

Good things should hap­pen to good peo­ple, so I man­aged to selected a hand­ful of my films that are fun and she might like and wrapped it up with a note inscribed:
Thank you for your gen­eros­ity. In return, please accept and enjoy my hum­ble gift, a diverse selec­tion of light-hearted enter­tain­ment that is far from the har­row­ing vision of Haneke. No more scary man star­ing at you!

I will post it tomorrow.

There you go, Shan. It’s not as rad­i­cal or as sur­real as my past yarns but I hope it’ll seal a smile on your face.