"Danny Nolan"

I sit in the audience, latently aware of the trade lecture being delivered.  I wonder to myself about the origins of baseball, its relationship to cricket, and how many of the heads in this hall watched it regularly.  Baseball baseball baseball.  Anything but the pert tits on the gal two seats over.  {Beat the wife’s by far.}  The Twins beat the Braves by far.  My ears perk up as the one lecture ends and applaud vacantly with the rest as the next begins.  It’s nearly lunch and my stomach feels a sight empty on account of the inedible continental breakfast served this morning.  Before I can lull myself back into the world of comparative baseball my attention is grabbed again by the speaker’s name:  Daniel Nolan.

Danny Nolan!  The name transports me back to my mid-man retail job, just after college.  ‘On hiatus,’ I would tell myself, though I never knew for sure if I would ever rise in the world.  I had a position at Home Depot, managing the Garden Center.  It was a good job and I thrived in it, consisting of a decent combination of physical labor and paperwork to suit my strengths.  A real resume builder.  The only real difficulty was in keeping the crew motivated and in-line.  I used them all; stretch circles, shift meetings, ‘cookie Fridays’; all the tricks of successful management psychology.  It worked quite well, but there are always the sour apples of the bunch.  There was one in particular, a Mark Somethinger, this cocky go-nowhere type; a real slacker.  Never tucked in his shirt.  Set a bad example for the new clerks and looked badly on the rest of us.  So one day I tell him {for the hundredth time!} to tuck it in in the back.  He dropped the bag of beauty chips he was moving and lost all control.  “You petty sonofabitch,” he shouted.  “You never know when to let the <bleep> up!”  I was ready to fire him on the spot {shirttails or no!} using language like that.  And he left that very morning, sure.  But something else he said stayed with me.  It went, “You don’t know him, and you never may meet him, but you’re Danny Nolan to a T.  In every way, shape, and form, you’re <bleeping> identical!”  He skulked away after that, but I still had Stevie from Security meet and escort him off the lot.  Principle of the thing.  But the name stayed on in my thoughts as I shaved the next few mornings, eventually forgotten until that moment at the trade convention.

I listen carefully to his lecture.  I don’t remember the subject by its end, but I can’t forget the way he delivered it.  As far as I could see he was well-groomed and decently dressed, though a little conservative to taste and a little dry in his delivery, perhaps.  But I couldn't see anything derogatory about the man’s bearing.  After the last lecture I catch him on the way to the restaurant.  We talk about this and that over lunch, about his family and his church, football and so forth.  His tie is knotted a little unevenly but there isn't anything about his character to complain about, either.  If this is the Danny Nolan, my apprehensions are put to rest.  He is simply a normal, hard-working family man sure, but beyond that not the least bit like me.