The Cream Colored Paisley Retort
A three-year-old girl wearing a pink-striped top was having dinner with her dad at the table just outside the periphery allowed by my stiff neck. She doesn't want to go back over to Mee-maw's anytime soon because some body or some thing over there scratched her eye today. And it hurt, she told her dad. I could feel it myself so clear and crisp and concise was her wording. And it was melodic too, how she sounded from where I sat. It was the only thing I could feel or imagine for 30 seconds, before my mind wandered to that place where I should just buy me a little bungalow, as much time as I spend there. The woman at the next table said to her friend that she could be upset about something that fit into no context an eavesdropper could appreciate but that there were more important things to be upset about and I had to for another 30 seconds consider what those things might be. The little girl was thinking about ice cream and ask her dad if she could have some. He said she could have some later and when later arrived he was true to his word and took her over to the counter and with his assistance she floated above the ice cream cooler and picked a flavor that I frankly never did see but it must have been pink because someone said to her while I masticated in a state of oblivion that her ice cream was the same color as her shirt. Oh and she did not want to hear that. She denied it vehemently. Perhaps this was the type of thing the other woman could have been talking about when she said she could be upset about it but there were more important things. Had someone earlier suggested the woman's blouse was the color of ice cream? Had I missed this? Have I been too wrapped up in the details of my own rather unremarkable life? The little girl is leaving now, following her dad. I'm shoveling as many soggy canned green beans as will fit into my silent, solitary trap, and she sees it on the fly, her chance to unload the burden of wearing an ice cream colored shirt. She's pausing in front of me, across the table, she's tall enough to pull this off, she's smiling at me, oh I hate this, she's going to make fun of me and then book out the door, she's got that look and I'm wondering how much interest is left on my karmic debt and will it ever be paid off?. Hey, she says, those beans are the color of your shirt. It is true what she said, the beans are exactly the color of this shirt, the green part anyhow, not the cream colored paisley swirly part. If I'd had more time I would have hit her with that, shown her a thing or two, kids need to learn life's lessons from grownups like myself, but you only ever come up with the really good retorts after the fact, in your mind. Oh yeah, you ice cream colored shirt wearing little girl, not the cream colored paisley swirly part, isn't, the color of green beans. Is not.
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