Jesse Lives! - Pg. 3

me the nickname “Miss Claudie”. “Saved a Times just for you, Miss Claudie,” he said one morning. “Yes, you. Every morning. ‘New York Times, please.’ Every morning. ‘Please.’ You were raised right.”
 
“Thank you,” I said, doubtfully. I didn’t know his name yet. “But what did you call me?”
 
“Miss Claudie, ‘cause you sure look good to me.” He said this with a shy smile, then cocked his head as if waiting for a response. I didn’t know what to say or do. He looked disappointed and added “It’s from an old song,” rather apologetically.
 
“Thank you again,” I said, hurriedly handing him a quarter and heading down the stairs.
 
I’ve been called plain. Well, to be truthful, I’ve been called worse than plain. In college, I was compared to Tiny Tim. The fuzzy-haired ukelele player, not the Dickens character. I’ve had adolescent boys fight not to end up in the seat next to me, and I’ve been pointed at by small children.

It’s a burden, but I bear it lightly since a side effect is that any positive male attention I receive is not based on my looks. I’m not rich either. Between my looks and my poverty, I have natural immunity to most of the male “toads” of the world, and I’m left with mostly princes to choose from. There are few enough of these, but they are generally worth spending time with. I have no complaints.
 
That being said, I had had little experience dealing with compliments on the order of the one I had just been handed. I had had particularly little experience dealing with such compliments from strangers. In my experience, such compliments had tended to be either mocking (“There’s a girl for you, Henry. Ain’t she a beauty? Go for it, Henry!”) or patronizing (“So this is your daughter. Isn’t she pretty! Takes after you, doesn’t she? I’ll bet you have tons of boyfriends, right?”) Jesse’s compliment was evidently sincere and it had me completely flummoxed.
 
All day long at work my thoughts strayed to the brief encounter. What had I missed? Had I handled it badly? Finally, I figured it out. Jesse had