Mr T and I are sitting in a tiny little office, the wind howling around the building makes the walls shake, I don't know what they're made of but I feel as if at some point soon we won't be in Kansas any more.
There's a middle aged man opposite us, he's telling us his life story. We're there to negotiate a price on my new car. We find out how many different cars he's driven dangerously fast in around some lanes between his house and his mum's house. He landed in a potato field once. Somehow his wife comes up in conversation, suddenly with no warning he says she died at the age of 29, leukemia. The conversation stops. I glance up at Mr T, he looks back at me, the deceased young bride lingers in the air. Neither of us know what to say. I mutter something, I can't even remember what. Over the course of the rest of the next 20 minutes or so the salesman mentions his dead wife again at least once. I have never been so lost for words my entire life.
A few days later I arrive at the same little lean-to office to collect my car, this time with my boss who has driven me over there. The salesman, his son and my boss chat about a local golf course and about football, I sit down and wait for them to finish so I can get on with buying my car. My boss notices a picture on the wall and asks if it's John Smith*. "No," comes the reply from the salesman "that's my brother, he died" and again, the conversation stops, there is silence. Boss doesn't know what to say, I don't know what to say, he quickly says something to get rid of the awkward silence, another brief chat and he leaves.
I make a mental note to tell Mr T when I get home that the salesman has again stopped conversation with a death bombshell, sign some paperwork and drive off in my new car.
Over a week since the first death bombshell I'm still baffled. Is that a normal thing to do? I can't help but feel it's not but maybe I'm the peculiar one. I just don't know.
*for the sake of a name
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