The last two days have been full of surprises. Working at the Thrift Shop yesterday, for instance, I was startled when the next customer in the checkout line reached for my head. He did it so clinically, though, that I allowed him to continue. He was a tall man with hands the approximate size of baseball mitts, and he placed one on either side of my head, tilting it up slightly. Although looking appraisingly, he didn’t make eye contact.
“You’ve had these earrings a long time,” he said. It was true, and I’d reached for them often in the decades that I’d had them. “They’re from the eighties. Maybe even the seventies.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“I grew up in New Mexico,” he answered.
“But how can you tell they’re old?” I persisted, expecting education on some aspect of the stones, such as when turquoise with that particular matrix was mined.
“The silverwork,” he said. The shop was busy, and the man released my head, completed his purchases by then, and left the shop. I looked up “eighties turquoise silverwork” when I got home and, to my untutored eye, none of what I saw looked similar to my earrings. He was right about them, though. You must have to come from the southwest.
Not much later, a father and toddler son entered the shop. The little guy stood transfixed by the door. The dad kept going, but in sight. The greeter at the door reached down a hand, which the son happily grasped, and they walked closer to Daddy. The greeter went back to her post, and the little guy stood where he was.
So I went over, he took my hand, and we walked over to Daddy. Daddy said hi. Son kept my hand and gestured to another part of the store. There, he pointed to a shirt that had caught his eye, which I took down to show to Daddy. It said something along the lines of, “I’m unsupervised right now. The possibilities are endless.”
Daddy roared with laughter. “He doesn’t talk, and already he reads English! He grow up to be President of United States!” We onlookers agreed this could happen. The child beamed. Daddy admired him. We were all happy they’d come to our shop.
This morning, Rascal and I were trying to cross Nixon at the time of morning when parents are dropping off their kids at Clague. City ordinance decrees that cars must stop for pedestrians in crosswalks, but these drivers were on a mission. Usually, about the third driver approaching the crosswalk will remember to stop.
Not today. Seven, eight, nine, more drivers in the far lane powered through the walk to make the turn onto Bluett. Finally, the near lane cleared of traffic, and I decided to cross halfway. At that point, to my surprise and relief, the cars in the far lane suddenly stopped.
So, what accounted for this abrupt change in driver behavior, I wondered, as we hustled to finish crossing. We were nearing the other side when the answer became clear. A crossing guard stood in the walkway, holding up a stop sign and smiling. Ah, how nice. I felt taken care of, and thanked her as we passed.
When Rascal and I returned to that corner, headed back to the barn, traffic had eased, but a strange sound startled us. Whoosh!
We kept walking, and saw a science class conducting bottle-rocket experiments on Clague’s front lawn. Our neighbors Frank and Elaine were passing at the same time, and we all stopped to watch.
We were well back from the proceedings, and the experiments continued. The teacher set the next rocket on the launcher. A young person pumped the bicycle pump till he could pump no more. The teacher pushed the go button.
Whoosh! The rocket soared into the air, then wafted back down, parachute deployed. We watched the process a couple times. The next student handed over her rocket and, on cue, pumped as long as she could. The teacher pushed the button, and whoosh, the girl’s rocket launched.
Presumably, the experiment looked at how lift and force and drag and gravity acted on the rockets the students had made. Mostly, though, it looked like a great way to keep science interesting on one of the last days of school. Certainly, it was entertaining for passersby.
Having a stranger grasp my head, the so-social tot at the Thrift Shop, the help from a crossing guard, and rockets taking off at the middle school: all of these were unexpected. Three were delightful. One, while harmless, was no-doubt-about-it weird.
7 June 2024