That’s Not In The Script

I love my friend’s little boy.  The Kid is three years old and knows he has me wrapped around his finger.  The thing is, entertaining a three-year-old is exhausting!  So, what do you do with a three-year-old full of energy on a fine Saturday afternoon? No, not the baby Benadryl.  Moms seem to frown upon that.  You enter him in a baby race, of course. 

So there I was in Central Park on Saturday morning lining The Kid up with all the other three-year-olds at the starting line.  I kept telling him that this race was for fun and he should enjoy it, there are no losers and all that other blah, blah, bullshit.  Look, it’s fine if you want your child to be an impotent, underachieving, unpopular loser.  My little friend, however, is in it to win it and so, although I was giving him useless platitudes just in case he turned out to be an utterly embarrassing failure, I also had him practice his Game Face along with important dignity-preserving statements like, “I let the Special Olympics kid win” and “It’s easy to run fast when you’re not burdened by all this handsomeness.” We may or may not have made other children cry.  Pussies.

Standing at the starting line, I surreptitiously checked out the competition.  I scoffed at the mom who had her kid in Baby Crocs.  O rly?  Even if you win this race (which you won’t) your kid loses.  Baby Crocs!  Humpft!!!  And then I looked down at her feet.  My. god.  She had long, leathery, bony feet that stretched over the edges of her flip-flops like an old gator sunning on a rock.  Really, her feet were overstuffed, cracked, vintage handbags.  Her toes were aged ginger.  If Dingo Girl had been there, I would not have been able to stop her from gnawing on those nasty feet.  I quickly turned my head in the other direction but then I locked eyes with HIM.  Oh, lord. 

Back in my younger days I was doing quite a bit of work as an extra on films and television shows shot in my town.  You may have heard of Chuck Norris and a little show called Walker, Texas Ranger.  I was on the set as an extra almost every week.  I excelled in the art of the fake, silent phone call made in the background of some lavish set.  I am the veritable Robert DeNiro of this little known niche.  For every take I’d create a different scenario.  First, I’d be the Tearful Girlfriend.  Face contorted in grief and despair, I’d conduct an entire conversation that started with an angry “You’ll never find another doormat as stupid as me!” and ended with me softly whispering, “So long, my love.  Go now with God,” before wistfully hanging up the phone.  And if you think it’s easy to convincingly portray intense emotion without uttering a single sound, you are sadly mistaken.  My favorite was Glamour Girl, where I’d mouth words like “Lunch?  Yes, I’d love to!  Oh, but let me check my calendar,” while tossing my long flowing hair and flashing a toothy smile. But my fine acting skills went unnoticed.  Until one day…

One day I got the call from my piece of shit agent that the casting directors wanted me to audition for a bit part in the show.  They were looking for someone sexy and bold but sophisticated.  They must have seen me in the background of last week’s episode when I was perfecting Phone Sex Operator!  Once the excitement died down, panic set in.  I was a naïve and not-so-worldly twenty-something.  What did I know about sexy but sophisticated?  Not a whole hell of a lot.  Just out of college, I was a starving artist living in khakis and denim skirts (hey, it was the early nineties in Texas where denim never goes out of style!).  I tell you what, the outfit I came up with makes me blush even to this day. 

As I teetered into the casting studio on pleather Payless five-inch stilettos, I noticed the other women waiting to audition had taken a different fashion approach.  One that did not involve looking like Jessica Rabbit trying to pay the rent in the red-light district.  “I got this,” I thought.  “These women aren’t even showing skin!” You know, if I’d spent more time paying attention to the show and less attention to the candy and sodas at the craft services tables, I’d have realized that Walker, Texas Ranger was a family-friendly show delivering heartwarming lessons week after week with a flying roundhouse followed by a tip of the hat.  It was not Streetwalker, Sex Arranger.

So there I was in the room with HIM, the casting director.  I started reading my lines at one end the room as I tried to walk seductively toward his desk at the other end.  Seduction is difficult to pull off in towering pleather stilettos when you’re used to wearing Keds, but I soldiered on, skillfully masking my unsteady teetering with regular tottering, swinging and swaying like the Betty Boop float at the Macy’s Spanksgiving Day Parade.  My voice low and husky, I whispered line after line because that’s what sexy women do, right?  They whisper? 

As I got closer to his chair my vision started to blur.  What the —?  My fake eyelashes had decided to become unglued and crawl down my face like hairy Wacky Wall Walkers.  But I pressed on, my padded boobs like beacons leading the way to his desk.  As I placed one hip against his desk and leaned precariously toward him, a wayward layer of eyelashes, having made its way to my chin, tumbled off my face and landed with a delicate splash in his coffee cup like a furry black fairy.  Neither of us said a word.  I racked my brain trying to cover my embarrassment without losing character.  Although it felt like a lifetime, I’m sure it was only a few seconds before I heard myself whisper seductively, “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t lash out at you like that.”

I wrapped up the scene moments later, proud of my ad-libbing and wondering if I would be able to contribute other lines of dialogue once I was cast for the part.  I went home and waited for the phone to ring.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  All of this went through my mind in the mere seconds it took for him to smile and say, “Gorgeous day for a race, isn’t it?” Oh my god, he didn’t recognize me?  I can’t explain why, but I found myself lowering my voice and whispering, “Yes, yes it is.” His eyes popped open wide but I was saved from further humiliation by the starting bell and everyone yelling, “Run! Run! Run!” And so, I did. 

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Take This Oreo And Shove It

An Oreo-wielding, Up–With-People-ish, Pollyanna with a used car salesman smile and faux bohemian dress from Urban Outfitters ruined my week.  There I was minding my own business mocking the pseudohippies worshiping at the Imagine Mosaic in Strawberry Fields when Pollyanna approached waving a half-empty tray of Double-Stufs. 

No, it was not half-full.  It was half-empty.  Call me a pessimist if you like, but if you have a tray half-full of Double-Stufs, you have a math problem.  The answer is B: a full tray of Stufs.

Speaking of SAT questions, Strawberry Fields does not have any strawberries and it’s definitely not a field.  What it does have is a mixture of Baby Boomers paying respects to John Lennon and his message of love and harmony together with a mob of stoned, weeping baby boomer offspring in Abercrombie tie-dyes.  Not only was the Abercrombie Generation not even born when Lennon lived and died, but their idea of activism consists of peacefully demonstrating that marijuana is not an antidepressant.  I was tempted — oooh, so tempted — to stir the pot (no pun intended) by calling out, “Snap out of it!  I mean, it’s not like he was Adam Lambert or anything!” Two things stopped me.

One, I was in no mood to fend off patchouli wearing pseudohippies wielding sitars and body odor like NYPD night sticks.  Two, there were Oreos.  Remember how, waaaay up at the top of this post, I mentioned Oreos?  You forgot, didn’t you?  Don’t worry, so did I.  Anyway, I know that you’re not supposed to take anything anyone hands you on the street.  But it was the park, it was sunny, there was music, and rainbows and unicorns, and second hand pot smoke.  And Pollyanna and her group of merry women were singing “All You Need Is Love” and waving to everyone and smiling. It was like a good ol’ fashioned love in without the body fluids. I got caught up in the moment and took the entire tray an Oreo.  And like that, I was doomed.  I had just twisted the top off the Oreo and was scraping my teeth across the creamy Double Stuf goodness when Pollyanna says, “You’ve been tagged!”

Tagged?  What the hell?  Look, bitch, Dingo doesn’t do memes so I’m not buying whatever you’re selling but can I have another Oreo?  Instead of an Oreo, she hands me a card with the following message:

Someone reached out to you with an anonymous act of kindness.  Now it’s your chance to do the same.  Do something nice for someone, leave this card behind, and keep the spirit going!

I would’ve handed the card back if I’d have known the existential crisis it would cause, but I was already up to the part of the Oreo-eating exercise where you suck really hard on your teeth, so I was kinda stuck.  Fuckers.  Who hands out Oreo cookies and then asks people to pay it forward?  Fuckers, that’s who.  Kind twatwaffles who want to screw with my life.  And so I’ve spent the past week running around trying to do kind things for people to get this monkey off my back.  It’s not as easy as you’d think. 

First of all, there are no guidelines. Just how kind do I have to be?  Hold the door open for a group of nuns kind, or rescue a child from adoption by Madonna kind?  I spent all last week in a miasma of kindness.  And it sucked.  Nothing I did seemed worth tagging someone else and saying, “Ha, ha, I did something kind for you, now you’re royally fucked!  Good luck trying to pay off this karmic debt, loser!” I mean, doesn’t tagging someone with the Kindness Card undo the kindness you’ve done?

I thought I was free and clear when I saw a couple rooting around for a quarter to put in the parking meter.  I surprised them by popping a quarter into the meter.  They said, “Thank you!” It was too easy.  I couldn’t give them my card.  Not for a lousy quarter.  I had to do something MORE.  I’ve been scouring the city trying to do something kind enough to warrant giving this burden to someone else.  I thought I was off the hook later that day.  As I turned the corner in the grocery store, I noticed this little old lady trying to reach a can of green beans on the top shelf.  Hopping around on pale little bird legs sticking out of yellow leggings she looked like one of those wind-up chicks you get at Easter.  I kept waiting for her to wind down and fall over.  I got the can for her, threw some birdseed in the aisle behind me, and went on my way.  But I didn’t give her the card.  “Hey, old lady!  You’ve been tagged!  Good luck finding someone shorter than you so you can repay this kindness!  Maybe you should carry a ladder with you everywhere from now on to keep this from happening to you again, huh?” It just seemed wrong. 

I keep thinking that I should just toss the card, but I can’t.  So, I’m a wandering Persephone, doomed by an Oreo to be kind to people.  Except Pollyanna.  If I ever see that bitch again I’m going to punch her in the face. 

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Never Been to Spain

Hello, Innernetz!  I guest posted at Kelley’s blog, Magneto Bold Too, a few days ago.  I’m cross-posting it here just in case you didn’t get a chance to pop over there and read it.

I went to see Wolverine earlier this week.  Did I replay the Hugh Jackman in his birthday suit scene over and over again in my dreams that night?  Oh, quit whining.  That’s not a spoiler, folks.  That’s incentive.  Now plop your $12.50 down and go get a gander at some man candy. 

Anyway, no, I did not dream of Hugh “Come-to-me-Baby” Jackman.  I dreamt that my mother was trying to get me to go to church.  But not just any church.  It was some country church with hard wooden pews and a preacher who looked like he just stepped off the set of The Scarlett Letter.  There was a fruit stand just down the street selling cherry pie and I could see it from my pew.  I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.  I don’t even like cherry pie all that much.

Anyway, I woke up craving pie and pissed off that I did not dream of Hugh “You Know You Want Me” Jackman.  But the universe was not finished fucking with me yet.  I packed up my bag o’ books and headed to Starbucks to study.  As some of you know, my Starbuck’s study days are often rather interesting.  I am a magnet for the flotsam and jetsam of humanity who want to critique my hair or otherwise flaunt their crazy.  This particular day was no different.

The coffee shop was relatively empty.  I set my laptop up in my usual spot, a tiny table that’s just large enough for my computer and a book.  About an hour later, I was thoroughly engrossed in my work when I heard someone say in a pissed off voice, “I said hello!” I looked up to find a woman standing beside my table with a Tupperware bin filled with a murky biohazard and, in her other hand, a newspaper.  “Um, hello?” I said, sure that she had mistaken me for someone else — like someone who was about to share my table when there were at least ten empty ones in the store.  At my acknowledgment, she beamed.  Her face broke into a smile and her hair, which radiated out from her head like braided spokes on a wagon wheel, practically shivered with delight, each braid giving the others enthusiastic high-fives.  My stomach dropped.  And then she dropped into the seat across from me, pushing my laptop across the table and placing her Tupperware Dumpster of Death and newspaper in the now-empty spot. 

Now, for the uninitiated, if you MUST share a table at a coffee shop, all that is required is a civil acknowledgment of the other person’s existence.  You do not need to engage in small talk, exchange phone numbers, or arrange for a house swap while one of you is in France.  No, just nod.  Smile.  And done.  Apparently, Wilma Wagon Wheel didn’t get the memo.  She plopped down and immediately started blathering, only pausing to inhale enough air to re-inflate. 

“Do you think we’re going to get some sun today?  I like to go barefoot when it’s sunny.  It makes my corns feel good.”

*deep breath*

“What kinda laxtop is that?  My brother has a laxtop but his looks better than that one!

*deep breath and a shaking of the braids over the sorry state of my “laxtop”*

“Did you see Medea Goes to Jail, Race to Witch Mountain, Mall Cop? ”

*deep breath*

The easiest thing would have been for me to move to another table, but once again I was cursed by my southern upbringing.  I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I stayed put.  And, as she opened the Tupperware Dumpster and began gobbing its contents like a mouse trapped in a cheese wheel, I figured she’d either finish and leave soon or the hazmats she was eating would kill her.  I tried to focus on my work only giving her a nod and an “uh-huh” every now and then.  I figured she’d get the hint.  She didn’t.  Instead, she stopped mid-slurp and slammed the container down on the table slopping a few tentacles over the edge and soaking her newspaper with ooze.  “What are you looking at?!” she yelled.  Oh, crap.  What the hell is going on?  I looked up from my laptop to see that she was directing her ire toward a man at a table several feet away.  “What are you looking at?!” she yelled again.  In an indignant stage whisper, she turns to me and gestures, “That man is staring at us.”

And then I sealed my fate.  I answered her.  “He’s not looking at us,” I said.  He’s working.” With an emphasis on the “working.” That simple answer appeased her and now, having gotten my attention, her braids did a happy dance.  “I’m going to Hallelujah!” she said.  “Have you ever been to Hallelujah?” she asked.  Shitfire, I thought.  She’s going to whip out her Gideon Bible, or Watchtower, or copy of Dianetics.  My dream of my mom trying to get me to go to church became less of a dream and more like a premonition. 

“No, I’ve never been to Hallelujah.  I’ve never even heard of it,” I said.  She was flabbergasted.  Her eyes rounded into a Tex Avery cartoon look of surprise and her braids just about leapt off her head in shock.  “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HALLELUJAH?!” she shouted.  “Nope, sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “Where is it?” Clearly disgusted by my lack of world geography, she waved her hand in the general direction of the Starbucks entry and said, “You know, over there!” I just shrugged and gave her a weak smile and said, “Sorry, still don’t know where it is,” as I prayed to God and L. Ron Hubbard that she would not ask me to look it up on my laxtop.  But I didn’t need to look it up because she described it to me in great detail.  How she’d gone to Liberty Travel to book her ticket (I didn’t even know people used travel agencies anymore) and that she just wanted to get her ticket but the travel agent wouldn’t stop talking about transfers, fees, and other mundane things.  But she finally got her ticket.  Just that morning. But she wasn’t sure where she’d put it.  No problem, she’d go back and get another one if she couldn’t find it.

“Are you sure you’ve never been to Hallelujah?” she asked.  The look of pity on her face was genuine.  First, I had a second-rate laptop and now, she discovers, I have never been to Hallelujah.  Hell, I’ve never even heard of Hallelujah!  So, she described it to me. 

Hallelujah has water, and sand, and palm trees and — wait a minute, this is sounding awfully familiar.  “Do you mean Honolulu?” I asked.  “Where?” she asked?  “Honolulu,” I repeated. “It sounds like that’s what you’re describing.” “Honolulu?  I’ve never heard of such a place!  Honolulu?” she said as she and her braids start laughing at my stupidity.  “Honolulu.  Hmph!” Now she thinks I am completely off my rocker.  “It’s just that I’ve never heard of Hallelujah and what you are describing sounds a lot like Honolulu.” I must have offended her with my suggestion because she placed the lid on her Tupperware Dumpster with a brusque snap! and gathered up her newspaper, soggy though it was with offal.  She and her braids turned their back on me and began to walk away from the table.  “What do you know,” she said, “you’ve never even heard of Hallelujah!”

She stomped away.  Three feet away.  And plopped herself down at the table of the man she’d yelled at just moments before.  I sighed with relief, went back to my reading, and pitied the poor man as, five minutes later, I heard her exclaim, “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HALLELUJAH?!”

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Best Idea Ever!

Three months ago, our Apartment Manager showed up at our door with a big blue tarp and a large skein of rope.  I figured one of two things, either the landlord had found a tenant who could pay a lot more in rent than I, so I was on my way to the bottom of the Hudson River, or the landlord had found a tenant who could pay a lot more in rent than I, so I was on my way to the bottom of the East River.  Fortunately, neither of those possibilities occurred, but only because, thank god, I live in an overpriced walk-up with no dishwasher, bad electricity, and obnoxious neighbors.

Anyway, Apartment Manager was finally getting around to fixing the wading pool that covers the rooftop deck of the unit below mine.  It’s not a real wading pool.  It’s more like a catch basin.  Lacking any apparatus to drain water away from the enclosed deck, the lightest rain, morning dew, or spitting contest off my terrace turns the deck into an amusement park wave pool for local pigeons and the occasional vacationing sewer rodent looking for some fun and sun far from the din of the subterranean rat race (what happens on the roof deck, stays on the roof deck).  And of course, what would standing water be without mosquitoes?  We have those in proboscis abundance.  (Get it?  Proboscis = prodigious?  Dingo even makes entomology funny!) Let’s just say that, if you’re a New York mosquito in the know, Casa Dingo is the happening place to stop by for a drink and a bite.

After months of complaints, Apartment Manager finally came to solve the problem.  His solution consisted solely of laying a tarp across the deck.  That’s it.  No renovation, no reconstruction, just a big, blue tarp.  At first, I thought he might be an idiot.  But, as the day wore on, all doubts faded.  If he wasn’t hooting or humming the Vonage Woo-Hoo song, he was whistling the Vonage Woo-Hoo song.  All.  Morning.  Long.  By mid-afternoon, I was humming the Woo-Hoo song as well, but instead of cheap long distance, I was envisioning rolling his ass up in a big blue tarp before using a Hattori Hanzo katana to make my own Kill Bill sushi. Woo-Hoo, Woo-Hoo-Hoo!

I was sitting at my desk Googling tutorials on swordsmanship and wondering why it takes all day to place a tarp over a roof when suddenly, in the middle of the day, outside of the apartment went dark.  UFO hovering over the city dark.  Godzilla-like monster outside the windows dark.  Or perhaps, most frightening of all, ectoplasm-powered giant marshmallow man walking through midtown dark.  I knew this would happen one day.  I opened the terrace door — graham crackers and Hershey bars in hand — to find a waving, trembling wall of blue.  I should have guessed.  Tsunami.

But, I didn’t drown.  The wall just stayed there, wobbling at me.  Blue wobble wobble.  It was the freakin’ tarp.

“What’s going on?” I shouted as I batted my way through yards of blue nylon trying to find an opening through which I could reach Apartment Manager’s neck.  “This is a great idea!” he shouted back with glee, rubbing his hands together as if he’d just discovered how to make explosives with two three-ounce bottles of shampoo rather than one six-ounce bottle of shampoo.  Apparently, all the whistling and singing deprived Apartment Manager’s brain of much needed oxygen.  I can think of no other reason why he decided to secure the tarp to the top of my apartment, sloping the material over the terrace to the far side of the rooftop deck.  The back of the apartment looked like an isolation tent from a horror movie except there were no cute, superviolent monkeys with cute, superviolent viruses running around.  I did a double-take.  Nope, no monkeys.  Just one whistling ass.

“You’re blocking off all of our light!” I said.  Apartment Manager was convinced that it would be a short-lived inconvenience. He promised that a more permanent and probably far less convenient solution would be in place in less than a week.  I wanted to ask him if a “more permanent solution” meant actually fixing the roof so it didn’t hold water like a woman eating two pounds of taffy a week before her period.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I went back into the apartment to fume.  The fuming only lasted a few minutes.  Not because I took the high road and decided to just deal with living in a cloudless sky for the next week, but because my fuming was interrupted by phhhrrrt!  Phhhrrrt!  Phhhrrrt! 

I tried to ignore the sound but my curiosity got the best of me.  I went back out onto the terrace to find that Apartment Manager didn’t have enough rope to tie down the tarp.  So he decided to use duct tape.  Yep, Apartment Manager was MacGyvering the tarp to a brick apartment building.  It was his very own Blue Badge of Stupid.  “This is my best idea ever!” he kept shouting.  Woo-hoo!  Phhhrrrt!  Woo-hoo-hoo!  Phhhrrt! Best!  phhrrrt!  Idea!  phhrrrt!  Ever!  phhhrrrt!

Later that evening, a passing thunderstorm made mincemeat of the Blue Badge of Stupid.  It lay sad and alone for two months on the roof deck below forming a delightful mosquito duplex.  I watched passively for the first month, then I ordered Sea Monkeys.  I hoped to have a colony of cute, superviolent Sea Monkeys with cute, superviolent viruses waiting for Apartment Manager when he finally returned.  Alas, that plan was thwarted.  Last week Apartment Manager came to fix the roof deck as well as the roof on the top of our building.  I thought that would be the end of the repair drama, but I think the real drama is about to begin.  Now there is a swath of blue tarp draped over the top of our building.  Realizing that duct tape was not the best way to secure a big, blue tarp to brick, Apartment Manager decided to keep the tarp from flying off the top of the building by securing it with bricks wrapped with rope and draped over the edge of the roof like piñatas for kids you just don’t friggin’ like.  Or maybe the bricks just say, “Best!  Idea!  Ever!”

It’s supposed to storm tonight.  The wind has already picked up and the bricks swing precariously closer and closer to our living room window.  All I can say is that I’m going to bed tonight dreaming of all the Sea Monkeys I could buy with the settlement money.

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Welcome to Crazytown

I have frizzy hair.  Please, please, you are too kind.  There is no need to protest in my hair’s defense.  I know I have frizzy hair.  The Hunch-Back Woman at the post-office told me so.  If anyone knows frizzy, it’s the Hunch-Back Woman with her I Dream of Jeannie couture, Sideshow Bob ‘do, and John Wayne Gacy clown make-up.

During a Starbucks Workday last week, I decided to take a brief study break and stop by the nearby post office to mail a package.  I pass this post office frequently and Hunch-Back Woman appears to be a permanent fixture. You can smell her before you see her — she’s fond of a particularly aromatic variety of maryjane.  In fact, if you stand downwind of her for a minute, you get just a little high.

Hunch-Back Woman usually stands at the door to the post office and opens it for the unsuspecting public like a mime playing a doorman except that the door is real.  And she is not silent.  I say “unsuspecting” because the last thing you expect as she holds the door open is to have her bellow the post office hours in your ear.  It’s a lovely customer service.  I don’t know why the post office didn’t think of it themselves.  It’s so much more convenient than having to review the hours plainly posted on the door.

What post office patrons could do without, however, is the colorful dressing down they receive if they ignore the nasty coffee-cup tip jar half filled with an unknown, grayish fluid she shakes in your face as you enter the building.  Hunch-Back Woman has quite a repertoire.  “Cheap bastard!” and “Dirty Whore” seem to be her favorites, but those epithets are usually reserved for the people who actually tip her.  Those who don’t tip her are often called much worse.  Her favorite — perhaps she is a fan of Mike Myers’s films — seems to be “Fat Bastard.” Every now and then I’ve heard her let loose with “Motherfucker!” but I think that special nickname is reserved for those who decide that facing off against Yucko the Hopheaded Clown is not on their Bucket List and decide to come back some other time.

On this particular day, I had already been tapped out of tips.  Figuring I would get a pass because I give Hunch-Back Woman change every time I see her, I offered a smile and a “Sorry.” Oh, yes, I was sorry.  Her pasted-on smile immediately transformed into one of Virgil’s Furies and I began to wonder if Hunch-Back Woman’s Wet & Wild Carnage Red lipstick was actually the bloody remnants of other non-tippers.  She sucked in enough air to demonstrate a lifetime of perfecting the art of inhalation before expelling a loud and vicious…

 
“FRIZZY!”
 

Um, what?  Frizzy?  Frizzy?!  I was stunned.  I was braced for “bitch” or worse, but not FRIZZY!  Is FRIZZY worse than Dirty Whore, Cheap Bastard, Twatwaffle, or all the other colorful euphemisms for men, women, sex acts, minorities, and homosexuals?  Because, believe me, I’ve heard her use almost all of them but I’ve never heard her use FRIZZY.  Self-consciously I reached up to touch my hair.  Had I forgotten to use my humidity resistant gel this morning?  I did switch conditioners, but this winter weather has really made.... 

Seeing my weakness she pounced on it. 

“Your hair is FRIZZY!  FRIZZY!  FRIZZY!  Hahahahah!  You have FRIZZY hair!”

I rushed past her into the post office lobby checking over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t flying at me with VO5 and a hair net.  I seemed safe for the time being and the long lines at the post office almost assured me that she would be gone by the time I left.  And thank goodness, she was.

So, stamps in hand, my frizzy hair and I headed back to Starbucks.  About a block away, I felt a presence at my shoulder.  Oh, no, I thought.  I walked a little faster.  The shadow kept pace.  I slowed down.  So did the shadow.  I was trying to avoid a confrontation but apparently there was going to be one whether I liked it or not.  I quickly turned to face Hunch-Back Woman and was surprised to find that it wasn’t her.  My shadow was a thin, bespectacled, confused-looking man in colorful superhero tights and high-tops.  Thinking that maybe he was lost or needed some other assistance I asked, “Can I help you?” This man who two seconds before was walking close enough to give me a colonoscopy suddenly reared back and yelled, “YOU STINK!!”

What.

The.

Fuck?!

Surely he and Hunch-Back woman came from the same family shrub.  One root.  One branch.  Twice the crazy.  He repeated it again just in case I missed it at 180 decibels.  “YOU STINK!!”

This time I was ready. 

Me (in sweetest voice evah!):  Why thank you.  That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day.

Shrub:  No!  I said, you STINK!

Me (very sweet):  I heard you.  Again, you are too kind.

Shrub (getting frustrated and welling up with tears):  No, no, no, no!  I said —

Me (making myself choke with my own sweetie sweetness):  I know.  And you really are a doll but I must be running now.  You have a nice day!

Shrub (crying):  crycrycrycrycry

I don’t know what the lesson is from all of this.  Do I need to pay more attention to my personal hygiene?  Do I need to find a Starbucks that is not in Crazytown?  Or maybe I should just tape twenty-dollar bills to my packages and avoid the post office.  My packages will still get to their destinations, right?

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