The conversationalist
I know I put something about this in my Facebook status update earlier, but I can’t stand for it to just fall by the wayside the next time I put up some frivolous statement. No, people, I cannot allow this fantastic morsel to go to waste, gone with the wind like so much cyber trash! Today something special happened: I met a real, live, Golden Girl! No, it wasn’t anyone that has ever worked with Bea Arthur (that I know of), but let me just say that I can only hope to one day achieve such geriatric greatness.
I don’t often shop at the Sun Harvest over off Shoal Creek and Anderson Lane, but I do get there in times of need. Like, when I have a social call, wait, sorry, like when Colette has a social call down the street in 45 minutes and I am positive that we aren’t going to come to any sort of agreement about going shopping afterwards. There is an order to things, and I know my place: Don’t buck the toddler system. Or, you know, do, and suffer some impressively mighty wrath. Whatever, it’s your funeral. I hope you have a popsicle stash in a freezer in your purse.
So it was that we found ourselves in the check out line at Sun Harvest near our social hour locale this afternoon. Everyone loves to talk to Colette, and she gets special attention in this store given its proximity to the Ben Hur Shrine.
*** Note: The very young and the very old are aligned against the rest of the population in ways you cannot even begin to fathom (unless you yourself are on a live-in basis with someone that belongs in one of those categories). My own contiguous vicinity to the very young allows me a view into just how close an alliance these two crews have. You, the parent, are a picker, a wiper, and a putter-to-bedder. They, the grandparents (for example), are the givers of all manner of forbidden treats, put-on-ers of needless band-aids, letters of movie-watching, and coddlers of every last fake cry. ***
But back to the Ben Hur Shrine… You know, that old folks’ club where a bunch o’ cotton-heads who like to dress up in fezzes and sequins doin’ their weird geezer carnival thing in the name of children’s charity hang out? Oh man, Shriners. My grandparents were into that stuff. (OBviously I never stood a chance at normalcy.) In any case, what this means in terms of the Sun Harvest demographic is a slant towards the silver fox. And people, I love me some old folks. I actually gave a 40-something year-old man grief once for taking the handicapped spot in front of the store one time. ”Excuse me? Sir? Did you realize you’re parked in a handicapped parking space?” (I mean, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.) When he gestured towards the hangy-thing on the rearview mirror with an eat-shit-lady look, I gave him the once over eyeball and mentioned how not handicapped he appeared. Whoops. I probably needed a good claw-sharpening for some other reason that day. Ahem…
Takes me like eight years to tell a story, huh? So back to the elderly encounter at Sun Harvest… Behind us in line today was a particularly sassy gramma type. She’s fit, she’s got modernish styled hair, she’s wearing bright red (is there any better hue suited for such types??), and she and Colette have found love at first sight. As they’re chatting away, she suddenly stops, sidles up to me, tips her head up, and with the sneaky sideways sorta look down towards my belly says, “Pregnant again, eh?” I start giggling, because she’s giving the impression that it’s kind of a naughty predicament. She keeps talking, eyes widening, “Ya know, I had four in seven years.” Now she’s telling the story like it’s the history of a haunted house. (Like I might ought to be freaked out about whatever the hell it is that I am getting myself into with this whole multiple children thing I’ve got brewing.) She keeps going, “I finally figured out what was causing it.” She’s so dry about the whole punch-line, and I’m dyyyyying in line trying to keep it together. I told her not to give away the secret, I like to find these kinda things out for myself. Then I let her go ahead of my full basket since all she had was a loaf of onion bread.
As soon as she was gone, I could not resist texting this information to some select folks and slapping it up on the Facebook in said status update via smarter-than-me phone. My dad’s response: “She’s a slow learner.” Hahaha! Oh, Golden Girl of the grocery store, you have stolen my heart!!!
