Post Thanksgiving

My Thanksgiving was fabulous, thanks for asking. I hope your holiday was equally as fabulous.

The days following Thanksgiving were also quite noteworthy. I had a couple of visitors this weekend that brought much joy into my home. Yes, my girl and her daughter visited despite the uncaught mouse (who, by the way, has not been seen since the sugar cookie and peanut butter incident). She is truly my friend. We didn't do anything special. Sat around watching tv and taking naps mostly. But time with my friend in the same geographic space is a precious thing these days, so her visit brought me a lot of joy.

This morning, I went to my men's group breakfast. Well, it's not really a group. It's just two men - the Minister, the Lawyer, and then there's me. I always envied the old men that would get together in the morning at the local McDonald's. It was the camaraderie that they had that was the most appealing to me. I kind of tripped across this "group" and was going at least three times a week for awhile. Then work picked up and I just didn't have the time or energy to get to breakfast and get to work by a reasonable time. I didn't go to work today, so I seized the opportunity to reconnect with the men.

The Lawyer had to eat and run because he had court this morning. So for most of the meal, it was just The Minister and me. It seemed I hadn't missed out on much during my extended absence. At one point, a woman from the next table came over to speak to The Minister. She had silvery gray hair and small eyes that seemed to squint at me the entire time she was talking. She was decked out in all of her holiday finery. She was layered in red and green sweaters, topped off with a silk scarf covered in Santas tied around her neck. Her coat was donned with a 2nd grade art project - a Christmas tree made of iridescent red and green plastic beads and connected to a safety pin. Her earrings were made in the same arts and crafts class, but these were brightly colored sequins on a red felt backing. I couldn't figure out how they were connected to her ears.

She began to talk, and almost instantly The Minister shot me a look. In about thirty seconds, I understood why. I had never met this woman before, but she began to regale me with her life story. She told me how she was married and had two children, and at some point "he left me [her] for a woman that had syphilis, the slut". It was at about that point when The Minister excused himself and went to the restroom. He had obviously heard this all before.

She went on to tell me how she raised her two children and her grandson, and now, for some unknown reason, they wanted nothing to do with her. She wrote her final letter to them this weekend and was going to "give it to the Lord and leave it there". When she was pregnant with her son, her belly was completely purple. The doctors later told her she had cancer and had had it for 10 years. The doctors said that "they hoped the child would be born somewhere between the syphilis and the cancer, and that it would turn out to be healthy". Apparently, her father favored her two brothers and treated her like an afterthought. The boys got cars when they turned 16 and she got married off. Her father left one of her brothers $100,000 and she got nothing. "My life has been filled with the wrong men", she told me. I couldn't argue with that. But with the way she went on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, I'm sure that those men thought she was the wrong woman. Now, to be fair, there was obviously a missing mental health diagnosis, but good Lord! Her twenty minutes of disconnected and random rambling ended with, "but thanks to The Minister and his church, I am much better now. I just give it to the Lord".

Here's the rant: Well, I don't really have one. I just thought this was a funny story. But if I had to come up with one, it would be ... Who tells a complete stranger their complete life story?! And why do complete strangers just start talking to you out of the blue? My sister thinks it's a small town thing. I like to call it her Small Town Theory of Chatty Cathys. While we were at home this weekend, my sister got bombarded by a woman in the waiting room of the local mechanic's. After waiting an hour for her car, my sister knew the woman's name (Wendy), her child's name (Sydney), what was wrong with the woman's car, had heard the child's Bible recitation for the upcoming pageant, and had weaseled lots of information out of my sister like her name, what she does, where she lives, and what was wrong with her car. Her situation was a bit different because the woman was more inquisitive than anything, which made my sister a bit nervous. My woman just couldn't shut up.

Not really a rant. More of a Seinfeldian observation.

Post Script: About 10 minutes after I initially posted this, my girl sent me a series of text messages about her experience on a plane that she had just boarded.

• "This lady just moved so she could to talk to me. Y?!"
• The lady's "hubby calls every 10-14 days". He's in Iraq.
• The woman told her about two babies she knows that were damaged during birth because they were pulled out by the neck.
• "She had a hpv positive pap. Y do I know that?"
• The woman lives in Texas, but is from San Francisco.

There goes my sister's Small Town Theory of Chatty Cathys.