Conversation totally innocent

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, February 26, 2008

(This is a rework of a column written back in ’93, back when there was still a hardware store. And a wife.)

She sashayed into the store like a ship in full sail. “I’ve come to flaunt my fat!” So proclaimed the oldish woman to me, with all apparent good naturedness. She was certainly quite qualified to do so, I observed, although that was most certainly an observation best kept to one’s self.

I’d never seen her before in my life. There’s never a dull moment in a hardware store.

Admittedly, I was taken aback by the suddenness of her proclamation. Never before had a stranger started a conversation with me in such a manner, if, that is, one could call this statement a conversation.

Because so far, her statement kind of hung out there, while I remained unsure of what to say to it.

“I’ve come from Fergus Falls,” she further bubbled. “I read what you write.” She seemed happy, but one never knows.

I checked her for concealed weapons, which wasn’t easy. There were plenty of places on her where substantial numbers of things could have been concealed. There were plenty of places on her, period.

She twirled and posed, giddily displaying her largeness. I became wary, started to back up.

These days, what with all the drive-by shootings by upset members of the human race, I figured it was only a matter of time before someone might read some unflattering remark of mine and come looking for me. The hardware store was a big target for a drive-by.

I vaguely smiled at her, nodded somewhat distractedly but agreeably at what she was saying, and escaped out the back door.

Later, much later, when I came back, the lady who runs the store for me said that, after I left, the lady said to her: “He can’t be too worked up about us fat people in this country — he hired you.”

Nice, with help so hard to find…

Later that day, The Old Girl happened to come into the store and be within hearing distance as yet another older woman walked up to me and said, “You probably don’t recognize me with my clothes on, do you?”

“Oh, sure,” I began to say. “… Well, no, I don’t really….Maybe. Probably.” This was most assuredly ranking at the top of one of my bad conversation days.

She smiled a huge smile at me, then at The Old Girl, and said, “I just stopped in. We were in town.”

“Great,” I said. “I think.” The Old Girl seemed to be finding this conversation much more entertaining than was I.

The lady smiled again, while I began to stutter and stumble my way through an introduction of this lady to The Old Girl, who, by the look on her face, seemed to be thinking the worse of me, suddenly.

This lady was standing much too close to me, in that way some people do, you know? Too close at the moment was somewhere around two miles, frankly.

“You still don’t know who I am, do you?” She asked.

I began to hope she was going to pull a gun on me. I began to fear she was insane and was going to press a bogus paternity suit on me. (Yes. It would too have been bogus.)

The Old Girl was also looking like she hoped this woman had come to shoot me, it would save her the trouble. There were guns on the wall, ammo in the display case. For all I knew at the moment, The Old Girl would have offered to load the rifle.

I heard the lady’s last words as I turned and fled out the back door of the store: “See you at the pool this fall.”

It turned out that she and her husband were also members of the exercise club, which has a pool, which I use. She always has on a swim cap and goggles when she’s in there, so I didn’t recognize her.

Honest.

Please don’t try to talk to me for a while.