Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Out of the Mouths of Strangers

My partner and I have had some wonderful experiences of late with strangers in public places. This has been especially good for Julie who tends to get scared of people in public. It has also shown me the humor in everyday life.

The first instance that we can both laugh about happened in our local Blockbuster on a late Saturday morning. We had made our decisions on what movies we were going to bring home and were on our way through the checkout. There was a man in front of us carousing the bagged candy and sodas that are there to entice us all to make poor diet decisions and cause the people with children to have to say "NO" a zillion times. He had picked out a bag of M&M's and a couple of Dasani flavored waters. We did not hear what ensued, but the man was at the checkout and turned around, walked past us and put the food items back. Whether he did not have the dough to pay for them or he discovered that he owed on late fees for movies, we don't know. However, what he said to us while he was putting the items back was great. He said "I didn't need this stuff anyway. . . thong season is just around the corner".

The next instance happened early this morning (after work) at a grocery store that we frequent. We walked in and saw an abundance of unsold Valentine's day balloons and roses. We went through and got what we had gone in there for and walked up to the checkout. As we were walking up we see a very large (think a mountain of a man) county police officer. The guy was easily 6'2" and probably topped the scale at well over 250. He had in one hand one of the unsold balloons and in the other a bouquet of red roses. I walked up smiling and said to him, "It's too late, Valentines day is over". He responded, "Oh no, I am trying to make up for having to work tonight. I am armed, and I'm scared". He continued on, "She's a little thing, but she'll cut me". We laughed, he paid his bill and as he was leaving he said "These flowers will look good on my gravesite, that's really why I got them".

We laughed all the way home.

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