Teasers & Excerpts – Inside a Bulgarian Ladies’ Room
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008How to sell my book to you? I now learn that it will be mid-to-late October before Hey Boomers, Dust Off Your Backpacks is up for sale on Amazon.com, as it takes four to six weeks after I send in my proof approval. However, you can order your copy from my blogsite, heyboomers.com (see link on right), if you simply can’t wait. In the meantime, I plan to use you guys as research guinea pigs by testing little snippets from my pages to see which has the most effect.
Twitter, twitter, does the prospect of hearing about the inner secrets of a restroom make you push that curiosity button? Yes, it obviously does, if you are here reading now. So, go ahead and admit it; the marketing people have known this for years. And, since this is about as racy as my book gets, I thought I’d throw it out first to capture those who haven’t made it out of elementary school yet. Besides, it’s pretty funny……I think, anyway.
I had just had a challenging morning in trying to get to the Sofia, Bulgaria, bus station in time to catch my bus to Varna, but once I missed that bus, I had plenty of time to enjoy the brand new international glass and chrome bus station. This story has the virtue of being short enough to include in a blog so here is a little cut from page forty:
“Inside the new and beautiful ladies’ room, we were stuffed like clams waiting for one of the five cubicle doors to open. All stayed shut a long, long time. Then, I heard a woman’s voice ring out and recognized the pattern of speech, if not the words, of someone talking on the phone. I scanned the ears of those waiting their turn with me, but no one had a cell phone in action. Incredibly, this conversation was coming from inside one of the booths, and it must have been a business call judging from the speech pattern.
A momentary trance passed over me as I visualized each stall with a desk pulled up to the toilet and busy female functionaries, hard at their morning’s work. No wonder the doors weren’t opening. How would she finesse it when the time came to flush? ‘Excuse me, Sir, let me put you on hold for a moment.’ ”
Most of the stories that I choose to tell illustrate the point that we humans are actually quite alike in our actions and attitudes. As I’ve roamed the world, I have been struck by the growing ubiquitousness of cell phones. Everybody, nowadays, has one to their ear. I always wonder what they can find to say during those hours of talking on the phone… and then I remember that mothers and teenage daughters have always had this conversation .
But, I think this little true story pushes the envelope to new phone-addiction lows.
lindajbrown