CECILIA, LAURA AND SOREN

Recently, in a local store, I noticed the name tag of the clerk serving me showed "Cecilia". Naturally, I began to sing Paul Simon's Cecilia (well, it's natural for me.) The clerk said, "My grandpa always sings that to me." Knowing right then that I was probably close to her grandpa's age, I said, "He must be a Simon and Garfunkel fan." As I thought about the next line of the song, I realized that it was hardly appropriate for a grandfather to be singing to a granddaughter. I asked her, "How much of the song does he sing to you?" She answered, "Just the name." Relieved at knowing that Grandpa had not sung any of the risque lyrics to her, I asked her if she knew the rest of the song; she said she'd never listened to it.

I thought, "NEVER listened to it? If I were named Cecilia, and I knew there was a song with that name, I'm sure I would've listened to it."

I debated with myself about continuing, but surged ahead, "Well, you're probably named for St. Cecilia." She said, "I've never heard of her." I said, "She's the patron saint of musicians."

Undeterred, I continued, "There's a couple of poems by famous poets about St. Cecilia you could google."

The lack of curiosity of people is a constant source of amazement to me.

This reminded me another clerk named Laura and when I sang a snippet of the song Laura to her, she said she'd never heard the song and she thought I'd made it up.  When I asked her if she'd ever seen the movie, she asked who was in it and when I said, "Gene Tierney" she said she'd never heard of HIM. How could anyone named Laura not know about the song and movie?

However, there is hope: my favorite store clerk is named Soren and he seemed pleased when I asked if he were named for Kierkegaard and he said that his parents were existentialists. That made my day.  I always try to get in Soren's line at the store.

Les asked, "What is it with you and clerks?"