While we were inside, Bernadine from Cornwall asked me how I
was enjoying my time with all the old people (herself included as I would later
learn that she was eighty). I said I was
having an amazing time and appreciated the fact that I was travelling with such
interesting people who all had a sense of wonder and adventure.
“Oh good” she said “because we like having youth like you
around too. How old are you? 26? 27?”
Bernadine was so sweet.
Then the others started asking as well.
“No, more like 30” said a couple of the women.
When I told Bernadine I was 37 she gave me that age old
backhanded compliment… ”you look good for your age!”
Everyone had boarded the bus and proceeded to wait for the
straggler of the group, Mary Ellen. Many
minutes went by before I, and my 37 year old knees, were dispatched to find
her, which I did quickly.
“The entire bus has been waiting for you”.
“Oh, sorry” she said in the shrill nasally tone that could
identify her in a crowded stadium. “I
needed to buy a t-shirt for my friend.
A t-shirt from a cosmetics outlet in the middle of the
desert: it’s an afterthought of a gift at best, the type of gift that tells
someone that you didn’t value them enough to find them something unique. Kind of like Mary Ellen’s own “dolphins
swimming through the night sky” t-shirt…trippy.
I have a theory friends.
You know those t-shirts that you often see that say “My friend went to
(insert name of popular destination) and all they got me was this stupid
t-shirt”? Mary Ellen’s the one that buys
them.
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