Thursday, August 02, 2007

Assault with a Deadly Look

It is a good thing dirty looks aren’t lethal or I would be lying dead in the parking lot of the library. A little more accurately, I would be stretched out in the morgue waiting for the cutter to find evidence of death by look.

I was sitting in the truck minding my own business and no one else’s. The radio was tuned to the talk show I often listen to whilst waiting. They had an engineer who could barely speak Canadian talking about the state of the bridges in North America. His Canadian wasn’t all that bad, just heavily accented. I’m in a snarky mood. It makes me feel superior to take cheap pot shots at innocent targets. He spoke a lot better Canadian than I speak whatever is native to wherever in the hell he came from.

Oh, gee. What is wrong with Buffalo? He is being so politically incorrect!

Anyway, I was sitting there minding my own business. There was a young Mennonite woman swinging a wee one on a swing in the park. She was wearing sandals and one of those brilliantly colored, floral print, calf length, dresses that seem to be their trademark. Of course, she had that black thingie covering the back of her head. I idly hoped the kid she was swinging wasn’t her own. She was too damned young to be breeding. The woman hadn’t lived long enough to even be thinking about having kids. If it took living rather than years to determine when one had a child, I’m thinkin’ there would be a whole lot of this girl/woman or woman/child that would never procreate.

A man and woman, along with their seven kids that all looked to be under eight years old, climbed into a mini van. They had been picnicking. The woman had walked past the truck a few times with a vacant expression on her face. She was wearing a fairly short denim skirt, flip flops, and a dark blouse. It took them a while to get all of the kids strapped into their respective car seats.

And then along comes Miss I’m All of That and a Bag of Chips, and a two litre Pepsi. Her hair was short, white, and spiked. Unless someone had scared the living bejesus out of her, I’m sure the color was choice, not nature. Whoever gave her the haircut, and whoever told her it looked good, should be drawn and quartered by four very slow moving Belgiums.

She was going for the layered look and succeeded. Her outer shirt was black and unbuttoned. The middle shirt was a gray slipover that stopped about where her belly button should be. The undershirt was black and partway covered her butt. The skirt was significantly short washed denim. On her feet were a pair of boots with 3” heels and tops that ended just below her knee. Naturally, she had earrings on that were large enough for a reasonably slender child to use as a hula hoop. She had strong eyelashes. At least I assume they were strong. There was so much black mascara caked on them it would take some muscles to hold her lids open. Against the pallor of her face, it was an interesting contrast.

I’m not saying this gal was ugly. She didn’t need a pork chop around her neck to get someone to play with her. Her face didn’t stop the clock in the truck. It was more the face of the girl next door.

As she was coming out of the library and walking toward the truck, I smiled at her. You know the kind of smile. That one you use when you are being polite. It never reaches your eyes, you don’t flash teeth, but you do observe the nuances of polite society.

The woman went turtle on me. Her neck disappeared as her head began to retract. She kind of angled her head over in that way witches do when they are giving you the sneaky evil eye along with a low grade cackle. The look that shot out of her eyes was sheer hate. You’d have thought she had caught me dropping something smelly and nasty in the communion bowl.

I know it was terribly rude of me, folks, but I couldn’t help it. I started laughing – loudly and genuinely. Well, shucky darn. It was like someone stuck a red hot poker up her arse and she took off at a lope. I was still laughing when her Jeep Liberty laid rubber on the street in front of the library.

Life is sweet – ‘cause I survived an encounter with a kill look. Well, as kill looks go, it wasn’t much, but I have to end this somehow.

Buffalo 4:29 PM

16 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home