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Menschy | Mar 15 2003

Something happened the other night that moved me. I was at a dinner party, sitting next to a good friend, Leah. Leah had recently gone on a date with another friend, Norman, and though this date had gone well, Leah had decided for whatever reason that she wasn’t romantically interested in Norman. Norman however… well, through mutual friends I had heard that he really liked Leah, and so one can only imagine how Leah’s decision had hurt him.

Norman attended the same dinner party as Leah and I, sitting at the other end of a long table. When Norman first arrived, Leah asked me if she should go over and talk with him; I counseled her to “lie low” and “give him space.”

It was a long dinner with many courses. At a certain point people started switching seats to talk with friends at other parts of the table, and then a seat opened up next to Leah, which Norman walked over and sat in.

That’s the moving thing. Norman swallowed whatever pride one feels at such moments and talked to Leah, letting her know between the lines that things were cool, “no harm, no foul.”

The word that came to mind is menschy. Norman’s gesture was menschy.

And it made me want to write to a certain ex and tell her that I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us and that I still care about her and that I don’t think she’s a bitch, which I do, only I would find some way to say that I don’t, naturally without using the word bitch, since that would be a dead give-away.