Sunday, June 08, 2008

Happy birthday Fridman (just don't fall off the trapeze, please.)


June 7, Bridgeton.

The handsome man in the show is messing with my bed. If I only were forty years younger.
So said seventy-two-year-old Myrna, our circus cook, as Fridman was working on her water heater, located under her bed.
About a month after the season started he began fixing her broken-down trailer and a quirky little saga began. Leaky roofs got patched, valves repaired, doors refurbished, and every time he would finish something she would find a detail she didn't like and complain about it. She yelled at him, told him to mind his own business, called him a chauvinist, and all the while made little flirty comments which became our daily funnies. We came to care for her the way you take to an old great-aunt who's a little odd but also the sweetest in the family.
Yesterday was Fridman's birthday. He worked all day long to make her a new door and when it was done she complained. We laughed it off as the way Myrna is. But when he pulled himself up the rope for his trapeze act there was a little old lady down in the alley looking up at him with a big hand-written sign that read "Happy Birthday Fridman," and he almost fell off the trapeze for laughing so hard.
At the cook house to get dinner earlier I had told Myrna it was his birthday.

1 comment:

beverly said...

Happy Birthday to you Happy BIrthday to you Happy Birthday dear Fridman Happy birthday to you. Love and hugs Beverly and Bob