Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Nut Magnet Strikes Again

I'm busy getting things arranged and organized for my trip back to Frostingville, the home town owned, managed, run, ran, and presided over by my Maternal line, The Frostings. I think I've said before, but it's always worth bearing in mind and therefore repeating, that I am the eldest girl-chick in a brood of 9 Over-Hens. That puts me at the top of the pecking order for girl-cousins, and an object of worship to the younger cousins both hens and roosters. Boys in the family have zero status. Sorry, folks, that's just the way we are hatched.

But being top-chick amongst 57 cousins is not that much to crow about when the Top Hen happens to be my Mother. It makes it impossible to be invisble, and invisibility is a trait you really want when you are living on the verge of being pecked to death 24/7.

Okay, enough poultry analogies. What I really came to talk about is the odd incident that occurred yesterday at the bank. I was yet again the target of a NUT, drawn into my magnetic sphere by the Nut Magnet Gravitational Force of Density.

I was pulling into a parking space, when a man dressed as a house painter walked right smack dab across my path, yapping away on his cell phone. Don't get me started about people who cell and walk. I was taught that a lady NEVER smokes while in motion, and I feel that this courtesy should extend to the use of cell phones in public. Either be seated discreetly or hang the damn thing up until you can be.

When the man, mere centimeters away from becoming a scrap of bloody paint-spattered white cloth on the grill of my car bumper, saw that he was in fact making a trajectory across a parking space currently about to be occupied, gave me a big smile and a wave and veered to the side. I caught a glimpse of him in my rear view mirror, meandering out behind my car and still vitally involved in his phone conversation.

I had to wait for him to move before backing up slightly and straightening out in the parking space, at which point he was suddenly beside me at the window, opening my car door! I had this snapshot of his hand, which for some reason had a fist full of cash in it, as he grabbed my door handle.

I said, "What the hell do you think you are doing?" as I threw my car into reverse and jerked the door out of his hand at the same time. I backed up, re-positioned and then shut the car off. I must have already determined from his clothing and happy-idiot grin that he was a harmless elderly gentlemen somewhat befuddled by technology and the concept of parking spaces versus actual walkways, because I wasn't sounding alarm bells, I was merely irritated.

I saw that he had high-tailed it over to his paint truck, and so I exited my car, amidst cries of, "You IDIOT! What were you doing???" from the painter's friend and partner standing by their truck.

As I walked past to the entrance of the bank, the geezer called out, "I was just offering you our full service red carpet treatment!" and I quipped, "I just about red-carpeted your ass, buddy!" and waltzed on past to attend to my banking needs.

Such a feisty and street-savvy girl as this should have no problem scratching her way through the hen-yard next week. We'll see how it goes.

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