Day 28: You'll never find another rejection like mine

I'm closing in on the home stretch now. Only a couple mores rejections to go. Only a few more episodes of heart palpitations and sweaty armpits. I'm almost there!!

I said something like the above to my friend Norma, whom I have previously mentioned as the gardening influence in my life and overall good friend. Norma and I were on a shopping trip for garden stuff and dog stuff (the dog stuff won out) on Day 28. While stopping for lunch at a local market, Norma and I discussed several good rejection ideas, one of which I used on Day 29. But I ended up going with a familiar theme of asking someone to sing a song with me, only this time doing it slightly differently.

Since my previous request to sing with a stranger actually worked, I needed to tweak my approach. I'd ask someone who looked busy and I'd have a specific song in mind. In fact, I printed out the lyrics to my chosen song and brought them with me on our outing that day in case I decided to try this rejection again. I'm not sure why I thought those tweaks would work, because they didn't, at first...

I saw a woman standing near the door as Norma and I were lunching. She looked like she was waiting for someone but was kind of fidgety so I thought maybe she's in a hurry and will say no. I went over to her and said:

Al was pleased with my rendition of his famous tune.

"I know this is a random question, but you know the song 'You're Gonna Miss My Loving' by Al Jarreau?" She didn't know, so I sang some of it to her. Badly. "Oh yeah I know the song!" she finally remembered.

"Great!" I said. "Would you be willing to sing it with me? Here, I have the lyrics and everything." I showed her my print out. She smiled and laughed. "Ok, sure yeah." Darnit! Oh well, here go. I'm obligated. We're gonna sing. Right here, in this market.

"Oh, okay, well come over here to our table and we'll sing to my friend. She's going to take pictures of us, are you ok with that?"

"Yeah that's fine!" more laughing....

"Cool. Oh, I'm going to post the pictures on the internet. You're sure you're ok still?"

More smiles, "Yeah that's ok, I don't mind."

I asked her name and we shook hands. Linda, lovely name. Linda and I stood next to each other in the middle of the restaurant area, and we belted out the first stanza of our best Al Jarreau, like so:

We had a good laugh and I thanked her several times before I went back to my seat and giggled at our performance.

But, I still needed a rejection, which came later that day as Norma and I were in the pet store cooing over little doggie sweaters. I saw a guy standing alone and approached him with the same request I had made to Linda. He was pretty young so he had no idea who Al Jarreau was and definitely got the "Is she crazy?" look on his face. "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to pass on that," he said as he let out a nervous laugh. I did try to push him a little but I got my rejection and was ready to head home, so I thanked him and left.

Whew! That was a fun one. Linda was awesome. And I am once again astounded that the people I think will say no often end up being the first to say yes.