Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I must be a magnet

I have been fortunate in my life to meet a wealth of interesting people.  There are SO many I could just sit and chat with for hours on end because I am simply fascinated by their lives and personalities.  Yep, I'm a tell me your life story, and I'll sit with rapt attention chat junkie.  Always have been, always will be.  If you're not late for your next appointment because we were shooting the breeze, there's just something wrong.

A weird little outgrowth of my deep interest in humanity, however, is that I get into the ODDEST conversations with people.  I'm not saying these people are odd--well, any more than I am--but for some reason, people feel compelled to bare their odd little details.  I'm always interested, don't get me wrong, but afterwards, I'm thinking "well, how did we get THERE on that conversation path?"  Like the time my new pastor and I had a conversation about his daughter. . . and, um, porn. 

Yes, that's right.  This great church, with great people that we're officially going to be members of this weekend had a family picnic recently at one of the longtime members' homes.  They have a fabulous pool.  This meant my behind was stuck next to said pool while my children refused to come out for love or money.  At one point, the pastor sat down and started a conversation.  He's a great guy, and I'm not one of those who thinks clergy can't be regular folk, but I'm a reformed Catholic, y'all.  I'm still weirded out that he's got kids.  Grown kids, in fact. 

He has kids, I have kids, we start talking kids.  He tells me his oldest is a junior film producer in California, and she's actually got a bit of cache now, because she's worked on some popular network shows and a successful documentary. She's now moving to get that "junior" off her title, and it's exciting.  His pride in his daughter's achievements was obvious.  He did share with me that times were not always so great for her, and she once lamented that there was a guy in her apartment complex who made really good money and kept offering her gigs, but she wouldn't take them, and she was afraid some day it may come to taking him up on his offer of production work.  Apparently, it was a year or more before she admitted to her dad that this quasi-friend was a producer for a different kind of industry (and this is where the story nearly stopped, he started stuttering, until I had a brain buzz, leaned over and provided in a whisper tone the words "adult erotica").  He--beet-faced agreed and recovered his composure--and apparently from then on, whenever things were really bad with his daughter, and she was crying on the phone about how she'd never make it in this business, he would respond with, "well, dear, there's always porn."

Did I mention I LOVE these people?!