This morning I ran the car over to Jiffy Lube for an oil change and I took my copy of Linux for Non-Geeks to read while I waited. Since it is a beautiful fall day, I sat in one of the chairs outside and started reading.
After a few minutes a man and woman came around the side of the building. He walked with a cane and she had that hard smoker’s skin. You know what I mean. Women smokers of a certain age have that tough skin on their faces. No amount of moisturizing or retinol is going to repair that damage. Reason #456 not to smoke. I digress.
Cane man pointed across the road to the strip mall and said that’s where it is. She said that’s too far to walk and why walk when you can drive. Cane man said that it wasn’t that far and he “didn’t have legs” but that he’d walk that far. She poo-pooed that idea and then stood close enough to me that I could have given her a wedgie. Her butt was right in my face. She lit up a cigarette and then paced around. She finally sat in the chair next to me. Right on the edge. I refused to look at her. I was reading and it was interesting. I got the vibe though that she was kind of ticked that I was sitting there, reading and silent. My silence had a dual purpose, though, and that was to get her to go away.
There are just some people that can’t stand the thought that there are people like me out there that have absolutely no desire to speak to them. She eventually told Cane man that she was going inside. Score!
She stayed there for about 10 minutes and when I went in to pay for the car, she went outside and looked for Cane man. He was way far away walking around. She stood and waited for him to come back to her. I drove away.