5.13.2010

Check Please: Lunching Ladies

I was at one of my working-people-strip-mall lunch joints sitting by myself in a booth when two ladies (ladies meaning middle-aged gals pushing all the buttons in Ann Taylor Loft cardigans) sat in the booth next to mine and exchanged fun gift bags for whatever occasion they were celebrating (the new SATC movie? I do not know). Then they prayed. Prayed and gave sincere thanks for the blessed seven dollar lunch and their blessed lives and their divine luckiness and the sacred spirit that consecrated their gift bags and the holiness that they share in their friendship and their blessed certainty of not burning in hell.

Then, naturally, the discussion shifted to Facebook and texting. I’m testifying here that the conversation went from prayer to gossip in half a bite of a burritto.  I would write exactly what they said for the sake of entertainment but I didn’t catch it all - I’m pretty sure it was just,  “Facebooked…facebook..texted me… texted her…then facebooked….then texted. ..toxic people…oprah…facebook.” 

The day before and nearly a hundred miles south on the riv over in Arkansas I was at the Burger Shack because they claim to have the best coke* in town when a gal (meaning skinny old woman in jeans with smoking wrinkles) came in and asked for a bag of ice. The worker grabbed a plastic bag and took the big metal scoop from the ice machine and started filling it up while the gal took out her checkbook and scribbled out a check for a dollar twenty-nine. The whole thing went down like they had done this before many times. Like there was a cash register slot for small checks.

Such are the midday habits of gals and ladies.

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*Note: It was a delicious Coke but I think that the check writing gal is on to something and the secret is in the ice.

1 comment:

bethany toews said...

oh sara, you are such an incredible writer. I love your world.