Suzanne Causes a Stir

(About a 2 minute read)

Suzanne doesn’t always make the wisest life decisions. She’s a bit too impulsive for that. Sometimes she gets herself into a bit of trouble. But she is remarkably resilient and unusually resourceful. She always bounces back.

In fact, her ability to bounce back from adversity is one of the things I most admire about her. I know of very few other people who do it as well or as consistently as Suzanne.

Sometimes I’m able to help her bounce back.

One day, she and I were siting in our favorite coffee shop when she suddenly announced, “I’m going to start keeping track”.

“Keeping track of what?”

“Of all the times you save my butt. Starting today, staring with your saving my butt earlier this morning. So someday I can repay you.” she said firmly.

“Oh? How are you going to repay me? I don’t think any repayment is necessary.”

Surprisingly, Suzanne took my question seriously. She paused for a few moments, thinking. Then she said: “Yeah, I’m keeping track now. And someday I’m going to give you a blowjob for each and everyone of the times you’ve saved my butt.”

We both laughed, but I got her subtle message: She didn’t expect to ever be able to repay me, but she wanted me to know she appreciated my occasional help.

A few weeks went by. I had another opportunity to help her a little bit. “That makes two now.”

“Two what?” I asked.

“I owe you two blowjobs now.” Apparently, Suzanne was taking her count seriously. And so it became a running joke between us. Whenever I did something for her that she considered important enough to amount to “saving her butt”, she would make a note of it in her diary.

One day, her tally caused a minor stir.

We were waiting in a bank line to get her a money order. That morning, Suzanne had accidentally spilled soup into the workings of her desktop computer, destroying the machine. When she later came over to my cottage — as previously planned — she mentioned the incident.

By sheer good luck, I had just gotten a new desktop. My old one sat in the corner, waiting to be taken to Goodwill. I pointed to it, “Will that do?”

Later on that morning, in the bank line, Suzanne brought it up again. “No way I could have afforded a new computer for months, Phil. You saved me again — you always do.”

Her voice was so enthusiastic that people turned towards us, breaking into smiles. A sweet looking elderly lady directly in front of Suzanne began to speak to her, “He must be a real….”

Suzanne didn’t notice her. Instead she went on, her voice even more upbeat, more cheerful, and more enthusiastic than before: “Fifty-four! That now makes fifty-four blowjobs I owe you!” She beamed up at me.

The elderly lady’s mouth hung open, but whatever words she might have had were frozen in her throat. Her eyes went wide as nickles. After a moment, she stuttered out a meek, “excuse me”, and quickly turned back to the front of the line. Behind me, I heard loud giggles.

Of course Suzanne noticed none of it. Her attention was focused only on me. Being Suzanne, she was so accustomed to causing stirs that she no longer tended to notice the more minor ones.