I had sympathy for Mary Ellen. I had no doubt that she was emotionally
traumatized by the breakdown of her marriage…she said as much during the
introduction session. I ran into her and
a couple of the other ladies as I was walking through the lobby after writing
for a while on the patio. Miriam asked
for help with setting up her phone’s WiFi connection so I took a seat and
played tech support. The soccer game was
still going on in the lobby and it was pretty rowdy. Mary Ellen was annoyed and began complaining
loudly about the kids and their parents.
The seemingly quiet woman had found her fire: “They’re worse than the
Portuguese and the Italians!” she said.
I bit my tongue so firmly that I tasted blood. She continued with “I want to go over there
and give them a shake”. This woman
needed to calm down so I invited her to laugh it off and accept it as a
harmless aspect of the culture. She
would have none of it and her scowl remained firmly in place.
A few moments later she turned to me with a smile and asked
if I was on an internet dating site. I
was so shocked that it took me a few moments to respond.
“No, I’m not on social media.”
But what I really wanted to say was “Sweet lord! You have
got to be kidding me!”
No comments:
Post a Comment