Last night we went out to a social gathering organized by Kat, the DHS high school librarian. When we stepped inside there was a long table filled with teachers from other ISG schools and no open seats, so we headed over to Sandy and Ashton, who were sitting off to the side sharing a pizza.
Amy headed out with Sandy and the smokers while I pulled up a chair and hung out with Ashton and was soon joined by Chris, Rich, Ian, Ryan, and eventually, Gary.
We chatted about Saudi culture, the news on women driving in the country; we debated which liberalization would come next on the country’s path to social legitimacy-- abayas or shops remaining open during prayer time. Ian kindly offered for us to join him in Yanbu on the Red Sea coast of Saudi sometime when he goes scuba diving and we just might take him up on that. Chris is working on his fifth children’s book and I asked him questions about the process and thought it was interesting that the writer of the story and the illustrator never meet. He spoke of changes in the industry and how in the past a writer would be committed to a single publisher for their books but today writers like him might have a different publisher for every book he writes and how rare it is that a writer actually makes a living on their books alone. It was loud inside and difficult to hear each other. I eventually had had enough of the volume, so I grabbed my drink and walked outside.
Amy and a group of ladies, including Sandy and Carolyn, among others, were talking at one of the round tables near the BBQ, so I pulled up a chair by Riley, a fellow Minnesotan, who was sitting at a table with three women who taught at Dhahran High School. Soon we were joined by both Ian and Rich, and I believe Chris came out, too.
We had a pleasant conversation about our respective Eid vacations--Ian recommended the Maldives, Riley and his family connected with relatives in Sweden and ours to Thailand. We were all Americans. The women were all in their twenties and each displayed familiar and well-worn qualities, as did Riley, Ian, Rich, and of course, myself.
One woman, sitting to my right was athletic with long muscular legs, one of which she propped up on the arm of her chair and one up on the frame of the table. Her shorts were light and exposed much of her thighs and she wore a tight yellow tank top, had a dark blond asymmetric hairstyle and wore no makeup. All the while we sat, she spoke the occasional glib remark while she picked pieces of dough from a piece of pizza crust she held in her hand one minuscule piece at a time and slowly put them in her mouth. There was an empty glass on the table in front of her.
The woman to my left was more compact and a little uncomfortable about it. She wore a tight white camisole beneath flowing dark floral sheer fabric and her short chestnut hair was wavy and sensible and appeared to require little maintenance. She talked about the movie Tall Tale -- the details of which she looked up on her phone, proclaiming this was a “lesser” Disney live-action movie of their childhood.
Riley and I had been talking about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox and their animatronic statues at Paul Bunyan Land and how Paul would disconcertingly speak to children by name as they stood before his massive plaid-shirted form.
“Hullo...Riley….How....are....you....today?”
That spectacular display of Americana kitsch has since been moved from its location along the vacationland jugular that ran through the heart of Brainerd, Minnesota to a new location, off the beaten path and for a new generation--in fact the generation we were sharing the table with this night.
The woman listing film facts taught advanced placement English and theater classes at DHS, the flagship school of International Schools Group and she probably made close to twice as much in salary as I did (or so I’ve heard) at my working class price-structured Dammam school where, on a staff of around one hundred, Amy and I are only two of four Americans.
My new friend proceeded to list data points for the movie--a 1995 American adventure western fantasy film….Patrick Swayze played Pecos Bill...Oliver Platt was Paul Bunyan, etc.
It was clever and funny the way she recited these facts and then moved on to joke about her height and having a Napoleon complex that resulted in a kind of pleasure when she had to lower the boom on one of her hulking male students or critiqued an overly sensitive student’s work and they were brought to tears. Her examples were in fun and I knew exactly what she was talking about. I’d been there myself.
The woman next to the AP teacher had long loose curled blonde hair and an open, tan face with a winning smile of pristine teeth. She, like my English teacher colleague, wore capri pants with sandals featuring brightly colored toenails. The other two guys listened intently. Ian was a lanky Oregonian with a topknot and Rich, an amicable PE teacher with a long resume of international postings, who had lived in Minnesota as a kid and had once been inspired to become a teacher by his own PE teacher, Willard Ikola, famed Edina high school hockey coach.
They leaned in as she modestly recounted her father’s apple orchard in Oregon near the border of Washington. She spoke earnestly of the transition from small farms on rocky soil to a wine industry and the collateral effect on the character of the place she seemed to know so well.
Riley, like me, was in his forties, married, kids. He worked together with these three women and two men and their shared experience was demonstrated in the ease with which they shifted from one topic to the next and laughed at each other’s jokes. They were nice people. I’d seen them before.
I still had half a glass on the table, but I excused myself and found Amy off to the side leaning on the counter in front of the BBQ listening to Gary talk with his clipped diction and his intensely courteous manner. I’m not sure what he was saying but when he stopped she gently urged him to ask a vivacious South African woman that we were fond of out on a date. He declined. He’d been there before, too.
I said I was ready to go, said our goodbyes to Gary and left.
It was a mild night. Summer was bleeding into fall and cooler temperatures. A pink full moon hung high above us as we walked back to our villa for the night.
