Old Ladies are Adorable
Today I decided to walk to Jewel, our local grocery store, to buy some Band-Aids. The reason? Last week I ran into a problem: while I was walking home from a bar in Wisconsin Dells, I saw a rock on the ground and tried to kick it as far as possible. Needless to say things went awry, I busted up my toe, and since then I’ve gone through an Iraq’s amount of bandages to cover up my grotesque busted appendage. This morning I found myself needing more, so I headed off to Jewel.
When I got to the bandage aisle, an elderly woman approached me in a rush.
“Can you help me?!?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. You see, I’m not a guy that can really help out much… not that I don’t want to, I just don’t have the mental or physical capabilities to do so. Things like building, fixing cars, solving calculus problems… these are all things that I struggle with. So if she is approaching me wanting me to build her a new ash tray, fix her brakes, or use the limit definition to compute the derivative, f‘(x), for f (x) = 1/2 x – 3/5, I know I’m not going to be able to help her out, and I don’t want to give her false hope, which is why I said, “I don’t know.”
Ignoring my response, she demanded that I come with her. She grabbed my arm and had me follow her out of the bandage aisle and towards the center of the store. On the way I rechecked my outfit, making sure I didn’t look like an employee. Unless the newest Jewel garb is a blue and white sleeved softball shirt that has the word “KRUNK” written on the center of it with black marker, green khaki shorts, and Alabama crock sandals, I in no way resembled a Jewel employee.
Out of pure curiosity I let her drag me through the store, ignoring the fact that I might be being kidnapped. Once we got to the card aisle she let me go and hurried down towards the middle section of the cards, which contained all the stores “singing cards.” These are the cards that when opened, play music. They’re great.
She looked around at the various cards, and when she spotted the one she wanted she took it out and handed it to me.
“Is this funny?” she asked.
The card had a cartoon picture of an elderly woman and a man on it, and when I opened it up, the Right Said Fred masterpiece “I’m Too Sexy” came on, specifically at the part where Fred says, “I’m too sexy for my shirt…” On the inside, the excited cartoon man has no shirt on, revealing his old, spotted obese upper half, and the cartoon woman is making a grossed out face. Above the characters it says, “Happy Birthday! You’re Too Old for This!”
I didn’t really get it. Maybe I was looking too deep into the singing card creator, but the whole spectacle of the card seemed unnecessary. But I figured the lady might really like it, which is why she wanted to show it to me, and since I didn’t want to make her feel stupid I said, “It’s hilarious.” She looked at me square in the eyes and said sternly, “I think it’s filthy.” Then she walked away without saying another word, leaving me with the “filthy” card. It felt like I was in trouble.
So I bought the card.
Old ladies are adorable.