The Ultimate Schmoozer

(Look at that face. Look at those sweet cheeks. Don't you just want to pinch those cheeks? What a sweetie!)

Oh, where was I?

I laughed all weekend at the schmoozability of the Jazzman.

Incident 1: We got onto the train at Alliance earrrrly Friday morning. The conductor stopped to check our tickets, and the Jazzman immediately reached out to shake his hand and introduce himself as a fellow conductor and secretary/treasurer of his UTU local. He always teases me about my membership and pride in Pi Beta Phi. He says he was in a fraternity—Phi Zappa Krappa. Well, his union identity is damned close to my Pi Phi identity, in my opinion. I kept teasing him about it all weekend as he introduced himself to every conductor we came across.

Incident 2: Continuing with the fraternity of conductors, I told you earlier about our having bought $6 round-trip tickets from the Ogilvie Transportation Center out to Ravinia. In the furor of the thunderstorm and heavy rain, one of the tickets fell out of Jazzman's pocket, never to be seen again. We had just boarded the train for the return trip when he realized it was gone. The sassy, constantly-joking young conductor came by to take our tickets, and Jazz told him it had gone. He tried to make the argument that we went out together, so we must have had a ticket, but got no leeway from the conductor. The conductor said he'd be right back, and went to finish collecting tickets. When he came back, Jazz whipped out his N&S ID and said, effectively, "Can't you give a brother a break?" The young conductor just moaned and said, "Man, you're killing me." We rode free back into the city.

Incident 3: A very nice young desk clerk checked us into the hotel on Friday morning. (Okay, I'll admit it. At our age, everybody is young!) We went up to our lovely king room. There was nothing wrong with the room. It was a very nice room. But as we looked out the window at the building across the street, Jazz suddenly said, "I forgot. I read that we should ask for a lakeview room." He called back down to the young man at the desk and said, "Do you have any lakeview rooms? I'm here on a special anniversary with my lady and wonder if there's anything you can do." (Jazz, of course, didn't divulge that it was the anniversary of my birth sixty years earlier.) The clerk told him to come back down to the desk, where he gave Jazz keys for a suite! A friggin' suite!

I never would have dreamed of doing something like that. But Jazz, the wheeler and dealer, knows whose hand to shake and when to shake it, and doesn't miss an opportunity to do so!

It was a lovely suite, and a lovely weekend!





So, the moral of my story is: if you need some special deals cut and some hands shaken, I've got your man!