Random bits

Observations notes in the store. Dates in no particular order.

~~~
Jan. 27, 2010

A woman came in the store today, a silly-looking woman. When she first stepped in, I thought, "you look ridiculous!"

At first I could only see the large donut of black fur around her head, and as she walked toward me, I wondered about her stilted, mincing, stiff-kneed gait. She asked me in a raspy voice if we carry wine glasses (because of course linen shops always carry glassware). As it happens, we do have a couple dozen, a discontinued pattern, but not what she wanted. She stumped? stalked? around in her weird gait, and I looked down at her feet, encased in very narrow-soled boots with a wedge heel at least 4" high - too high for her to walk with any sort of natural stride, so she clumped, stomping the soles of her feet down flat with each step.

She wore leopard-print pants of some crinkly material, drawing attention to her pencil-thin legs and ridiculous boots. Her jacket wasn't too awful (at least it wasn't quilted!) - sort of coffee-brown, hooded and belted, and short, not covering her stilt-legs at all.

Her face - perhaps it was the result of Botox or facelifts, perhaps a bout with a nerve disorder, but her face did not move as it should. Her blonde hair - dry, lusterless, straw-like - stuck out long, ragged and uncombed from beneath the fur donut.

Totally out of place. Dressed to show off - she had probably never not dressed to show off. She was pleasant enough, for all the palpable reek of cigarettes that hung around her. But she dressed to make an impression, and she certainly did. Not the one she wanted to make, I'm sure.

~~~
July 7, 2009

Hot day - first hot day in over a month. Real summer at last, after 6 weeks of cold and wet weather.

A stick-thin woman comes in the store wearing lightweight linen pants and a sleeveless top, and knots a long woolly scarf around her neck.

--
A man blusters in, as energetic as a spidermite, with his soft-spoken wife trailing in his slipstream. He asks for a washroom - I direct him to the nearby public loo. He leaves, she stays and I ask her if I can help her find anything. "Oh, no," she says, apparently unnerved by the offer. "My husband has definite ideas."

When Husband comes back, all crackling, zipping energy, he tells her what he likes, not paying any heed to her preferences. He picks the sheet pattern, scoffing at her timid suggestions, and only conceding to her when she reminds him of how many pillows they have, and so how many shams they need, and what size. He vetoes her choices of towels and bath mats. He then pays, restlessly searching through all the incidental POS (point-of-sale, not piece-of-(ahem) stuff) items - soaps, sachets, trinkets - while I wait to see if he's going to add anything to his purchase. Then he vibrates with impatience as I finalize his sale, and he scribbles a hurried dash as a signature and herds his spiritless wife from the store. He reeks of self-importance and self-consequence. I do not like him.

--
Here is a woman with voluminous hair, easily doubling the size of her head, and slightly flattened as if she had it done yesterday and slept sitting up in a chair. She wears a coordinated pants-set - blue pants, and a blouse with huge pink flowers on it. Squeaky little voice, thick makeup that does not quite hide the leathery texture of her too-long-tanned skin. Huge necklace and earrings of silver starfish set with tiny multicolored rhinestones and beads. A Florida lady, living for the pleasure of shopping and lying on the beach.

--
Overheard, Date unknown:

Man: "I don't think you should put your sunglasses on to evaluate whether it matches. Take your sunglasses off."

Woman: (pause) "It doesn't not match."

--
January 2005

They came in late one winter day - about 5.30pm, an hour after dark. The little girl, aged four or five, was dressed in a pretty pink jacket, her butter-blonde hair mussed and tangled in the puff of white fuzz that encircled her hood. Her white snow boots seemed too heavy for her feet, and she scuffed wearily after the woman. "Mommy, I'm tired. Can we go home?"

"I'm shopping," the woman said, not looking back at the little girl. "You said you wanted to come; now you have to wait until I'm ready before we go home."

"But Mommy, I'm tired."

"You spent all day skiing. No wonder you're tired."

They circled the store, and every time to woman stopped to examine something, the little girl leaned or sat on something, so tired she could barely stay on her feet.

They finally passed in front of the counter. The woman wore her black hair sleeked into a severe knot at the back of her neck. Her high-heeled boots added another four inches to her height, and her chocolate-brown sable coat rippled in shining folds around her. Mouth downturned; eyes hard and cold. I could not determine her age; she may have been thirty, or she may have been fifty. She wore makeup so thick and carefully applied that any telltale wrinkle or frown line (as I could not imagine her having smile-lines) was completely plastered over. I had the impression that she was around thirty-five or so, but the makeup made her look older.

She swept by without a glance in my direction, but the disconsolate, tired little girl, scuffing along in her mother's wake, looked up at me with big, sad blue eyes, fatigue making slate-gray smudges beneath her eyes. I gave her a smile, but she was too tired or shy to respond, and scuffed on after her sable-draped mother. How could anyone not have seen, or cared, that that poor little kid needed to have a warm bath, a cup of hot soup, with animal crackers, and be snuggled in a blanket, and rocked to sleep?