|
Last Wednesday, a woman with whom I am acquainted and whom I shall, in this story, refer to as “Celeste,” accompanied me on a Costco shopping mission. When we had collected most of our intended purchases and placed them in our cart, I left Celeste in the back area of the store, near the deli and the bakery departments, while I fetched an additional cart from the front of the store because I had found a good sale price on large, clear plastic storage boxes with lids and had decided to buy the full allowable number, which was ten sets of three boxes with lids. I loaded the second cart with thirty boxes, which pretty much wiped out the end cap display, but I found only fifteen lids, so I located a stock clerk and requested that more lids be brought to the end cap. The stock clerk made some calls on a walkie talkie and eventually advised me that there would be a slight further delay in getting the lids.
I tried phoning Celeste to advise her of the slight further delay, but she did not answer her phone. By this time, other customers were showing an interest in the storage boxes and seemed to be eyeing my boxes covetously, so I left the area of the end cap and rolled my precious cargo back toward where I had last seen Celeste. I found that she had run out of steam—she happened to be just two days shy of reaching an age at which a lot of women run out steam—and had settled herself into an easy chair, a floor model of a Malachi Leather Power Reclining Six-Piece Sectional Set with Power Headrests, priced at $2,999.99. A woman who looked to me like a “generic little old Wisconsin lady” was seated two recliner chairs away from Celeste. They were engaged in conversation.
Celeste assured me she was okay, just tired. I gave her an update on the storage box lids and returned to the place where the stock clerk was supposed to meet me. Eventually he did, and the shopping trip concluded on a happy note.
On the drive back to the little town where Celeste and I reside, Celeste told me of conversational exchanges she’d had with no fewer than three other shoppers, all of them female, while I was busy acquiring storage boxes.
The first was with a lady trying to choose a birthday cake she’d offered to pick up for “a friend, not a close friend.” She wasn’t sure whether to buy a chocolate cake or vanilla. Both looked great, Celeste and the lady agreed, but Celeste suggested vanilla would be a safer choice, and the woman appeared to appreciate the guidance. Celeste remarked, “It’s my birthday on Friday,” and the stranger declared, “I want to buy you a birthday cake!” Celeste answered, “Oh, that’s so kind of you,” or words to that effect, “but no, thank you, my husband would be so disappointed. He has promised to bake me a cake or a pie.”
A second woman, also a stranger, leaned over the back of Celeste’s recliner as she rested in it, and said words to the effect of, “Want me to help you get your feet up?” Again, Celeste politely refused.
And the third conversation was with the little old lady I briefly met. She told “her whole life story,” as Celeste later described it. She was taking a rest while her husband visited the hearing aids and eyeglasses departments. She would like to get a slushy, the lady said. Her present husband was a pretty good guy, she said, or words to that effect, but she had been married before he came along, for thirty-eight years to a man who did not treat her well and whom she had at last divorced. That earlier husband had eight brothers, three of whom each approached the suddenly single lady in turn and announced that he had had a vasectomy and was available to “meet her needs,” or words to that effect.
There’s more, something sort of cute but less salacious, but I’ll leave that item unspoken for now. I’ll just assure you that when the lady and Celeste said farewell, Celeste reminded her to get her slushy, and I will close here by pointing out that you are listening to unsworn testimony from a guy who heard all these things from an honest person, Celeste, who passed them along while also not under oath. If my report sounds substantially credible, and if you happened to listen to Cassidy Hutchinson this past week, as she testified under oath before the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, perhaps you can appreciate the evident truth and beauty of inexact quotations, particularly when they are disputed by someone who has time and time again proven himself to be a big fat liar, or something to that effect.
♦
|
