Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Whereupon I Notice Strange Things Today

It's not that I know everyone in our small town by name but I do recognize most faces as being "locals". So it seemed a bit unusual today at the grocery store when I saw nothing but strange faces...strangers. It seemed so unusual that I actually looked around me to see if I were imagining things.

One young mother in particular caught my eye. She was dressed like a hippie or a Mother Earth type. Not that there's anything wrong with that...it's just that we haven't had any hippies around here for decades. She had two delightful toddlers in tow. The younger of the two wore a leash that was attached to a loop on her mother's pants. Nobody around here uses child leashes although it seems like a reasonable and sensible thing to my way of thinking. Easy to keep track of a kid that moves quickly. The two little girls appeared happy and well loved.

Her grocery cart was filled to the max and a second cart held six gallons of milk and six gallons of water. I wondered if they were traveling or perhaps lived way out in the boonies somewhere in the hills on the far side of the county.

We left at the same time so out of curiosity I looked for her license plate to see if she were local or "out-of-town". No license plate on the back of her old Toyota. As I exited the parking lot I noted no license plate on the front either. I wondered how long she'd been driving without plates. Strange.

Then I stopped at the thrift shop. A young mother was checking out a large stack of jeans and shirts. Her young daughter was happily carrying a blue stuffed dog which she told me was "Sado Abigail". Her mother explained that what she was saying was "Sarah Abigail". Nothing unusual about that...a young Mom saving money by buying clothes and a stuffed dog at the thrift shop. Then I overheard the mother tell the clerk that she should probably head on home as she had left a pan of eggs boiling on the stove!

I haven't heard the fire sirens so I suppose her home is still standing.

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5 comments:

melissa said...

Bet you were indeed scratching your head after all of that oddness. I sure am. ;)

Debby said...

No license plate? Now there is a mystery. Police are generally very observant about things like this. Right away, the first thing I think of is the radical militia groups that refuse to 'pander' to the govt. even about small stuff like buying a car license, or a dog license, or paying their taxes. Generally, because the 'govt. has spies everywhere', these people are identified pretty quickly. Which feeds into their paranoia.

In any case, the other mother is not such an oddity. She's just a foolish person, and there are a lot of them about, no matter where you are. Sadly, sometimes, I 'r' one too.

Scott said...

When my son was 4 yrs old, I remember telling him something like: "lets go walk around town until we see something really strange." Which we did. It wasn't long before we spotted a car attempt to cross the train tracks in front of an oncoming train. At the last moment the driver changed his mind, tried to back up, but couldn't backup because the guard gate had come down to block traffic from the train tracks. SO there was the car and driver trapped between train coming and the guard gate. The car did back up so that the truck was under the gate which just barely allowed the front of the car to avoid hanging over the tracks. AND the train came and went just missing the car trapped by an inch. Satisfied we had seen something strange and unusual I think we finished our walk chalking it up as a success. -- Your story reminds me that I don't look so much expecting as I purposefully did that day walking with my 4yr old son. - for today you saw some strange things.

Kelly said...

My kids love to hear me tell how I was kept on a leash as a toddler. Our family (2 parents, 2 kids, 2 teenagers) took a two week vacation out west in a station wagon years ago. I said the leash is what kept me from falling into the Grand Canyon!

elaine @ peace for the journey said...

Sure it wasn't a dream? Very strange, but as for the child leashes, each one of my 4 had their very own. Wish I had invented them.

peace~elaine