It’s the Memorial Day weekend, but instead of sunny hours at the beach or stuffing our faces with cookout food, a front of rain and wind is covering a large part of the East coast. Not the best start to the official summer season, but we Americans are resilient. We make the most of nasty weather by substituting other things.
For me, I decided to blow some of my paycheck money at the mall. Having found a new store in which to indulge in collectibles, I entered through the department store. While I worked my way around the handbags, a woman with a cartlet (my term for those shorter versions of the typical shopping cart) was backing up and apologized out of fearing she had run into me (which she hadn’t). We talked briefly before she headed off for pizza at the food court, and one of the first things she mentioned in our conversation was how nice it was to interact with somebody. I couldn’t agree more.
After walking around and depleting my spending cash for the week, I was on my way back to the department store and passed a family about to experience a minor incident. Two women of the party of four had taken the escalator down to the lower mall level, and the father and son, who appeared to be somewhere approaching a double digit age, were coming to the boarding point when the son balked and stepped back, leaving his dad taking the ride down alone.
The young man was showing signs of distress and stepped away from the escalator to duck behind a pillar and review his predicament. From his negative replies to his companions below, I assume he either had a prior issue with escalators (possible), had never encountered one before (highly unlikely), or had a sudden mental meltdown which was taking away his ability to perform what for most is a simple task (a result of anxiety or anything else in the general annals of mental health).
Now, other than a tiny handful of encounters, in spite of my years, I have never had the experience of being a parent, relative or adult confidant to a child, so what happened next I still can’t explain. I spoke out loud to the young man and said, “You can do this.” After a moment of hemming and hawing, he returned to the top of the escalator and stared down at the moving vertical ribbed risers appearing magically in front of him. I continued talking, encouraging him and pointing out that he simply needed to look for the yellow horizontal stripe leading the first riser emerging at the top and stepping on it. He held the railing himself and then took the plunge, stepping onto the riser to applause and thanks sent up to me by the two women as the dad headed back via the up escalator. Didn’t know I had it in me, but now a young man is out there who no longer knows fear of trying, and I’m humbly glad to have helped in that effort on his behalf.
On the way home with my new purchases and a strange feeling of awe at what I had done, a vehicle in the opposing lane blinked his high beams at me. After checking my daytime running lights and finding nothing amiss, I drove a few hundred feet more and suddenly realized the blinks were a warning of Canada geese crossing the road ahead (but now far behind the other motorist). Two mated pairs with a half dozen pre-teen goslings were striding or toddling across the lanes, so I needed to stop completely. As the traffic began to grow behind me, the family of geese bringing up the rear decided to double back. Those of you who have read my blog for years know that once I accidentally un-alived a squirrel who tripled back on a major highway before I could take evasive action, so I definitely didn’t want to add baby geese to my list of deceased creatures. One of the adults gave me a glare that could melt bricks, and I gave a light beep on my horn to discourage the creature from further actions, then backed up a few feet to make sure no goslings were in my path as we were finally clear to continue.
When I finally got home with my hoagie (purchased from the local Knights of Columbus fundraising event) and my new collectibles, I took the time to identify a bird that appeared at my feeder earlier in the morning and I had never seen before. The new food I had just installed attracted some new diners, and this black and white creature was apparently a Warbler. He joins some woodpeckers and flickers and sparrows at the feeders which I try to keep restocked, but they are hungry little guys.
So was I. The hoagie was a great way to end a busy morning. And we still have two days of holiday weekend to go. Who knows what may happen next.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 