Getting Flashed By the Elderly
I've been at work a lot lately. It's been ridiculously slow because vacation season is over and holiday season hasn't started yet. I work at an airport newsstand, so my store traffic depends on how many people are flying in and out of Detroit. It's been so bad I've been reading on the job a lot lately, and that's a big no-no, but that's neither here nor there. I suppose my real story begins with the fact that I've been noticing a lot of loonies lately. It seems they come out to play when there's nobody else to see them - besides me of course.
I'm working by myself on Friday (again) when an elderly lady wheels her self into the store. She couldn't have been any younger than eighty, and she seems to be in an awful mood. She is muttering nonsense and crashed right into an souvenir display, knocking down several keychains and almost running them over with her wheelchair. I know she notices what she did, but she doesn't bother to apologize, which is fine.
She ponders at our selection of nuts for awhile, eventually picking out a bag of overpriced cashews. Scowling, she makes her way to the cash wrap and hands me the nuts and a twenty dollar bill. "I want these nuts," she demands. And as I'm giving her back her change, she doesn't take the coins. This forces me to watch and wait for her to put away the fist full of bills I've handed her. She proceeds to lift up her shirt all the way, exposing her bra and way more than I could ever want to see. I try not to make a sour face, but nothing can prepare me for what's going to happen next. She lifts the cup of her bra, and nestles of bills into her bosom. I look away faster than you can say ew, and I'm so glad I did, because I would have been able to see everything. She holds out her hand and I give her the coins and wish her a nice day. She grumbles something and slowly wheels herself out of the store.
There is a man waiting outside the store for her. "I got my nuts!" she yells at him. "Now push me outta here!" That is the last I see of the nut with the nuts, but I can't help but think of her all day. Questions float around in my head. Was she an elderly stripper at an elderly gentlemen's club? Where did the twenty she handed me come from? Why was she so grumpy? Did she see the irony of her buying nuts? Why would she flash the poor girl in the newsstand? I will never know the answers to these questions, and maybe that's for the better.
It's time to get ready for another day on the job. We'll see what today brings. You know what they say; another day, another loony.