Selling Soap – This is How Stupid I Am

Apparently, the director for this commercial is slower than most. On day two of shooting, a van came and picked me up at my house and got me to the set at 7:15. At 3:30 I still had yet to be used. I sat and read near the little space heater in the room where the food was.

Sitting near me was a pretty woman, bundled up and sitting directly in front of the heater, reading a worn, cloth-bound book. It looked like literature. As other people were called onto the set occasionally, she never budged. She wasn’t wearing a lab coat, so I figured she wasn’t in the cast, but she didn’t appear to be part of the crew, either. After a while I figured out that she was the set medic. She didn’t speak much English, and she seemed a little shy when people came to ask for cold medicine or whatnot. Occasionally something amusing would happen nearby and we would exchange a chuckle. I tried to think of some way to broach a conversation with her, when we had so few words in common.

Eventually my name was called and I limped out onto the set. My shoes had given me a blister on my heel the day before. False alarm; I limped back to the waiting room. She looked up from her book and I shrugged and rolled my eyes and she smiled. I returned to my book, wondering what I could say to her. A while later the call came again, I limped back out, false alarm, and back I went. Smiles exchanged, back to the books.

Some of you, by now, may have already caught on. Let’s review the salient points:

  • There was a pretty woman sitting a few feet away from me for hours and hours
  • She reads old books
  • I wanted to talk to her
  • She was bored
  • She was a nurse
  • I was injured
  • It is her job to help injured people

You see it? The subtle opportunity I missed? To not only talk to her, but to get some relief for my heel as it bled into my sock?

Man, I’m stupid. I wonder, now, if I would have thought to ask for help if the nurse had been a toothless old man.

4 thoughts on “Selling Soap – This is How Stupid I Am

  1. Are you an introvert at heart? It’s always been difficult for me to get up the gumption to talk to attractive people, too, but I’m getting better (though I’m married so it doesn’t matter). :-)

  2. If she had been on her game, she would have seen the limp and offered to help you! Pretty, maybe, but a weak nurse…or perhaps just as attracted and introverted as you…

  3. Introverted – I’m not sure that’s the right word. I live inside my own head, there’s no doubt about that, but in my social dealings once I overcome a certain threshold I’m quite personable.

    As far as her offering help for my gimpiness, she had no way to know that that was not my natural state.

    “May I help you with your foot?”

    “What are you talking about? Are you mocking me? So I limp! Is that such a fucking crime? WHY CAN’T YOU PEOPLE LEAVE ME ALONE?!!”

    I can see where she would hesitate to offer aid. I think she could quite rightly expect someone bleeding into his sock to ask for a band-aid. Perhaps she’s even wondering what’s wrong with her, that the guy who was hurt never asked her for help.

    Things are never simple when you make them complex.

  4. Being an introvert is not the same as being shy. Introverts may be outgoing and friendly in certain circumstances, but eventually they will need some time alone in order to recharge.

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