A lady I met in the line at Wal-Mart drives 27 miles to work each day, coming from Sapulpa to Broken Arrow. And she bought macaroni and cheese on sale for thirty-nine cents because Wal-Mart will price-match. And soda. Her teen-ager drinks a lot of soda, but she doesn't drink it at all. There was more, but you get the gist. I never saw her before and probably won't ever see her again. We had a nice chat, though.
And last week my husband was sitting in the car with Gus, our dog, while I ran into a convenience store. Just as I came out a lady came up to the car to see Gus (Who wouldn't? He just happens to be the cutest Yorkie in three states). She thought he was cute but apparently she thought hers was cuter because before I knew it she was sticking her cell phone into the car to show us a picture of her dog, which was the the screen saver, and all the saved ones in the album. But they wouldn't let her take her little Gretel into the Aquarium and on and on. We would have been home half an hour sooner if Gus had just kept his head inside the window in the first place.
Almost every time I go into the post office or a store I learn all the details of the check-out guys' failed prom date, the sad saga of a lady who had lost all her trees to a tornado and was replacing her shade plants with sun plants, several stories of operations, failed and successful, the pros and cons of making your own baby food and quite a few recipes (mostly for Mexican dishes, this is Oklahoma, after all). You don't want to know what I've learned in doctors' offices.
It's kind of like Speed Dating for grown-ups; a couple of minutes of pleasant conversation but you don't make a date, in fact you never see them again. I, of course, would never talk to strangers myself. Well, okay, but only when I have something really interesting to say. Or ask. Like whenever I see a guy buying a bouquet of flowers I give him a thumbs up. I'd like to know what he did that he's apologizing for but I haven't gotten up the nerve to ask...yet. And maybe I talk to babies sitting in the grocery cart while their moms are unloading things onto the checkout belt. (Oh, don't tell me you never do that! I see you every time.) And I have to whisper a little encouragement to the same moms who are trying to deal with temper tantrums being thrown in public by their two year olds and still hanging in there. It's a Grandma Rule.
Once, when I opened my wallet and found I was short two dollars to pay the bill, the lady behind me insisted on paying it for me even though I was sure I could go out to the car and scrounge up that much in change from under the seats. That's one I've tried to pass on and it's pretty fun.
I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's toes here, but when our kids lived in a state farther north and east, people didn't speak to you if they didn't know you. I thought I was in a foreign country! I couldn't even get a smile out of the person handing me my food at the drive-through. And when we were leaving the hospital with our new-born grandbaby and several other people were in the elevator with us, not a soul spoke! Can you imagine being right next to a baby you know was just born and not talking baby talk or finding out how long the labor was? It must be something to do with the cold weather back there.
One time when I was in a serving line at a buffet---an out of town wedding, I think---a total stranger, I'd never seen her before in my life, was chatting with me as we waited to be served. "I try not to take too much at these affairs," she said. "But, you know me, I always do."
It's been about five years since I met that lady, and while I restrained myself from saying "Uh, no ma'am, I don't know you." I've thought about her a lot and I realized that, yeah, maybe I do know her. I think she's Me.
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