Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’m amused when elderly women flirt with me. Then I remember, I’m just three years short of seventy.

I’m basically their age, although that’s not how I see it in my optimistic mind’s eye.

July 2, 2023 0

Thursday’s Wandering Thought

He was waiting for his wife. Standing about twelve feet in front of her, he watched as she came out of the store, looked left and then right, and then begin walking to her right.

“Hello,” he called. “Where are you going?”

Her head snapped around. “There you are. I didn’t see you.”

“I was standing right there.” He pointed.

This happened again at another store thirty minutes later. When it happened again, he was certain that she was gaslighting him. There was no way that she couldn’t see him like that three times. Unless, maybe, subconsciously, she blocked herself from seeing him.

Hmmm, he thought. Hmmm.

June 29, 2023 0

The Resemblance

He thought he saw a friend entering the coffee shop, staring at him as the other passed.

Impossible, of course. His friend, Andy, died back in the early part of the century, murdered while on a business trip in Tennessee, a story misted with mystery. Andy and a woman he’d met at a bar talked to a man in the bar about buying a boat. After some drinking, the three went out to the man’s house at midnight to see the boat. A fight ensued.

Andy always carried a knife and pulled it now. The knife was taken from him. Stabbed twice in the abdomen, he staggered half a mile down the long dirt road leading to the house. A trooper found him dead on the roadside hours later.

All that came back as he watched the man with the remarkable resemblance to Andy. Other possibilities could explain why the man looked like Andy. It could be Andy. Andy could have returned from the dead. Andy’s death may have been faked, the death story constructed as part of some larger con. Maybe Andy had a twin he didn’t know about, or he’d crossed into a dimension where Andy still lived. Theories crowded his head as Andy’s doppelganger took his coffee and departed the establishment.

He couldn’t let it go. Catching up, he called, “Andy.”

The man turned back to him. A smile flickered over his expression. “No. Not me.”

Sipping his coffee, the Andy twin turned and hastened away.

June 26, 2023 0

June 26, 2023 0

Today’s Wandering Thoughts

They entered the coffee shop, passed the hall with two restrooms in it and two signs pointing out those restrooms and walked to the other end of the coffee shop and stared at the employees’ break room door. Then they walked back to the counter and asked the baristas, “Do you have a restroom?” If they’d let their eyes go left, they would have seen a third large sign saying, “Restrooms” with a significant red arrow pointing the way and explanatory text, “The restrooms are in the hall to the right.”

Sometimes, though, you know, urgency just pushes rational thinking and observational skills right out of the brain.

June 25, 2023 1

Floof Sleep

When he settles for a nap

The floof comes along

Sniffing to confirm his identity

Verifying he’s still alive.

The floof settles in

And then settles again

And again

Draping a paw over his chest

Pushing a furry head against his cheek

Taking too much room

Rendering him captured and immobile

As he relaxes and sleeps.

Awakening stiff but refreshed

He reminds himself again

Sleeping with a floof is the best.

June 24, 2023 3

Saturday’s Wandering Thought

He had a rogue eyebrow hair. It curled up and away, refusing efforts to make it fit with the rest of his eyebrow. With a suppressed small sigh, he cut it back. He’d learned years ago that once an eyebrow went rogue, it needed to be trimmed. Don’t pull it, though, no. All kinds of things could happen if you pull it, including a gray – or worse, a white – replacement hair growing in, or nothing replacing it at all, leaving you with smaller and small eyebrows.