by Kat Apf

Created on: May 06, 2008

I met Nanette when she interviewed me for a job. I had seen the help-wanted sign in the bookstore window and went in, on impulse, to apply for the job. She hired me on the spot. It was such a whirlwind interview I truly forget most of what was said.

She was shorter than I am. That's saying a lot. I'm five feet tall. Her hair was this odd mixture of blonde, brown and red. I once asked her about it and she swore to me she'd never dyed it. It just grew that way. It was this tangle of messy curls, very much like my own. She had the kind of hair you could stick a pencil in and it wouldn't fall out. You might lose it in there, though.

Nan always wore these long flowing clothes, skirts to her ankles and long sleeves no matter what the season. After I got to know her better, she told me she'd had skin cancer and was petrified of the sun and what it could do to her.

There was an immediate connection between us but I've never been sure exactly why that was. I think I liked her so much because she was so different from anyone I had ever met. She spoke her mind and pulled no punches. She was one of the most honest humans I've ever encountered.

She was one of the funniest people I'd ever met, too. She was close to thirty years old when I met her but she had the twinkle of a kid in her eyes. She'd do these outrageous things and always get away with them.

One Christmas, during a crazy morning when someone had called in sick and the two of us were ringing on registers as fast as we could, the back doorbell rang. We were the only two in the store and there was no way we could answer it. We looked at each other in a panic and then, started laughing.

Nan finished with the sale she was in the middle of and held up a tiny finger to the next customer, as if to say one minute. She ran to the backroom and I kept ringing and ringing. She came back, a bit red in the face and said, "I told them to go away. It was a warehouse shipment. I'm going to get fired." And then, she burst out laughing.

She didn't get fired. When our District Manager came in, the next day, Nan went to lunch with her. Later she told me she basically told the DM that if they were going to fire her, she didn't care. She was only human and there were only two of us in the store. The DM backed her and said she'd done the right thing.

I envied Nanette's marriage. They seemed so perfect together. Her husband was also a short person. They looked like the ideal couple in miniature. He was a guitar player. Nanette called him a

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