Oh for a camera!

Every time something like this happens, I SWEAR I will check my purse next time to make sure I have my camera. But today I didn't. I didn't even have my cell phone to use as a crummy camera.

But it's OK because it probably would have made for a really boring picture, but I laughed and laughed at the Senior Moment DocuDrama that I witnessed.

In the late morning I went back to Borders. Those postcards were calling to me and I bought another 35-40. I now have enough postcards of Davis and of some of my favorite places in California to last me until I'm sick of PostCrossing and until all of my Compassion Kids and penpals have seen them all.

I also realized that in addition to postcards and books, Borders was also selling off things like body lotions for very cheap, something that is desired by our female soldiers in Afghanistan, so I also went shopping for Amanda, and picked up a nice set of body products and several books of games and puzzles. I felt very good about myself. I even remembered to bring a bag to put them all in, since there are no bags to be had in the store any more.

It was nearly lunch time and I do like Jack-in-the-Box cheeseburgers (the small one, plain...just meat and cheese in a bun) so I did a run through the drive-in window and as I was coming out, across the street I saw ... *the attorney*.

Now I think that at some time long, long ago, I discussed my brief time working for *the attorney*. I did transcription (of course) on a part time basis. He was a very weird man to work for. He was so insistent on absolutely no social interactions among the women in his employ that he actually paid for us all to go to lunch whenever someone came back from a vacation so we could discuss the vacation and get it all out of our systems at lunch time and it wouldn't interfere with our productivity. I think if he could legally have done away with coffee breaks, he would have done that too.

I remember the Saturday (oh yes, he often called me to work on Saturday and Sunday) when his first grandchild was being christened. *The attorney* was in a positively rotten mood because he had to go to the damn christening and couldn't be at the office. I listened to his complaints for just so long and when he was starting to find excuse not to attend the christening, I finally screwed up my courage, marched into his office and forcefully said something on the order of "Look...this is your first grandchild. You'll never have this day again. Work will wait. Now you put on your tie and go to that christening and you smile!" I was amazed that he actually did.

He never gave us bonuses, but he asked us, instead, to go out and buy ourselves a nice outfit and then come in and model it for him and give him the bill. I was never a target of his little chases around the law library table (which apparently were legendary), and too naieve to understand why I had to go into the "liberry" and close the door so he could ogle me in my new outfit (I was a normal weight then). These were the days before sexual harassment was even talked about and he paid well, which is why I guess women stayed with him. He was relatively harmless and absolutely devoted to his wife,but he did like to ogle. But I never looked back once I was out of that environment.

I remember SO clearly the day I left the job. It was 1986 and I gathered up my nerve and told him that I quit...I think I gave him a bogus excuse about something else I was going to be doing because I didn't have the nerve to tell him what I thought of him and his job. I left that office feeling lighter than air because the weight of the world had just been lifted from my shoulders.

Once, long after I left the job he called me to ask if I could do him a favor and come in to "cover the office" for a day when he was going to be in court. But he asked me to come to his house so he could give me special instructions. When I got there, he told me that what he wanted me to do was to do some work, yes, but mostly write down for him the names of whoever talked socially while he was gone. I am so proud of myself for telling him that was demeaning to his employees and I refused to stoop that low. He never called me again.

So anyway, here is *the attorney* across the streeet from Jack in the Box. He's about 1,000 years old now and is standing in the middle of the street wearing orange plaid Bermuda shorts which came just above his bony knees. He's half stooped over looking like a ref who has just called a play on the football field and he has one arm up stopping oncoming traffic and another arm waving a car into the diagonal parking slot. I assumed it was his wife driving.

I don't know which slot she was aiming for because there were two of them and they were at the end of the block and she was straddling the two slots and he was trying to direct her back out on the street and into one of the two slots. The car had that jerky stop-start-stop-start motion you see when you are afraid you're going to hit something.

I giggled but I realized I couldn't just stay there blocking Jack-in-the-box, so I turned right and into the lumber yard parking lot, intending to circle around and back out on the street again so I could look furtively as I drove past the car. Only it took me a long time to get onto the street again because now the traffic was backed up the length of the whole block.

By the time I could see things again, it was *Mrs Attorney* standing in the middle of the street looking helpless and trying to hold cars back. I passed them and pulled around the corner trying to see the end of the drama but I guess *the attorney* managed to park all right and traffic began to move again. The last I saw of *the attorney family* they were slowly shuffling away from the car, somewhat hunched over, and headed in the direction of a restaurant, the inseparable couple they have always been -- despite a little innocent ogling.