Did you know:

Copied from a Facebook post. And, oh my. Good grief—what?

I’ve been around a few years and let me tell you—I was totally unaware of this. I also wonder why teachers (even in grade school) don’t tell students such things. Imagine. It could have made percentages interesting! I would have been joyous to know this. It would have given me the thrill of being a secret agent. A holder of secret knowledge. But then I would have told anyone who would listen. Of course I had to check this out by multiplying a few numbers. And then it was obvious.

What? number two: I ate breakfast at a restaurant this morning before going to the grocery store. I love restaurant eating. Not only because I don’t have to cook, but for the theatre of it. I’m sure that I must have discussed this previously. I must have as I so enjoy the sense of almost being a voyeur—and in public. Usually I hold a mental discourse to include myself in the drama I am witnessing. Not today’s fare. Today I watched a woman sitting alone in a booth. For the longest while nothing out of the ordinary happened and I couldn’t see anything of note occurring around us. I turned back to my book, [Run, A Novel by Ann Patchett] an after-dining habit I indulge while drinking my coffee. I glanced over the book just to check in with my subject while expecting nothing, and was met with a surprise.

She was sitting there rolling up remnants of the paper products—napkins, the sheath from a straw, the wrap from the eating service, and so on. Then she tossed them over the table to the other side and floor of the booth. Let me complete the picture by telling you she was an old woman with completely white hair and a blue sweater wrapped around her shoulders to keep her warm from the cold of the air conditioning. The kind of woman whose mother would have slapped her hands at such behavior. The kind of woman who never would have allowed her children to do such a thing.

I started to laugh but stopped the moment I began to think of reasons. Could she be drunk? I thought not. Was she angry with the service? No, she had chatted easily with the waitress earlier. She might even have been a regular customer.

What then? The words we dread to use as we get older or have older loved ones. The words that float in and we push them away. Alzheimers. Dementia. But no, I thought. I couldn’t end with that. Good theatre wouldn’t end with that.

What the hell. Maybe she was just having fun.