Standing on the sidewalk shaking hands

Garrison Keillor's Podcast

Prairie Home Productions

Society & Culture, Fiction, Comedy Fiction, Improv, Comedy

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What remains powerful is love. My parents loved each other dearly and I witnessed this and it remains large in my life. When I was six, I was a slow reader — when you’ve grown up trying to read Hezekiah and Jeremiah, it does crimp your style — and my teacher Estelle Shaver noticed and kept me after school to read aloud to her from Dick and Jane. When Bill the janitor came in to empty the wastebaskets, she said, “Listen to this boy, Bill. Doesn’t he have a wonderful voice? He’s entertaining me while I’m correcting workbooks.” It was remedial reading but she made it feel like a privilege and this act of kindness sticks with me. Call me naïve but I think marvelous feats can be accomplished by small acts of kindness.The country is moving toward electing a woman president and I am touched by how presidential she looks, her warmth, her gracefulness, how she can converse with a crowd, how she ignores the insults and the bellowing of walruses, and speaks in clipped sentences about the future of the country. This will be a first in my life and I’m looking forward.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Standing on the sidewalk shaking hands. I did something last Sunday I'd never done before in my
0:27.7	82 years. I went to a cafe on the main drag of Keene, New Hampshire. And I could hear my wife say, although she
0:38.5	was 500 miles away, wash your hands before you eat. You've been shaking hands with a hundred people.
0:47.8	So I walked to the rear of the
0:53.3	men's room door locked.
0:56.8	A wait person said,
0:58.8	said, use the ladies.
1:01.8	I looked at her, aghast.
1:05.0	Go ahead, we do it all the time, she said.
1:08.1	Yes, but you're a lady, I said.
1:11.5	She laughed. She said, she laughed.
1:13.4	She said, go ahead.
1:15.0	It's no problem.
1:17.1	I waited a minute.
1:20.0	She laughed at my timidity.
1:23.6	The guy in the men's room must have been doing his eye makeup or something.
1:28.5	So I went into the ladies.
1:31.9	That's not my term, that was the word on the door of the restroom.
1:37.1	It was a regular toilet except with no urinal. I put the seat up, I aimed very carefully, then flushed, washed my hands, and emerged.
1:52.1	And a woman stood there waiting.
1:56.1	She was more my age than the weight persons.
2:00.9	She looked at me somewhat severely. I wanted to explain but didn't know how to say that I was told to go in there.
	...

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