On baring all and Geritol

Well, I would be remiss if I didn't thank you for reading and writing and baring your dating souls last week. You've at once left me saddened for your many losses and on the verge of dry heaving at the thought of ever entering another relationship. That and completely in awe of the fact that you thought enough of me and the Internets to share these painful memories and utterly unbelievable statements. Oh, the complete lack of humanity in so many humans.

I thought about balancing the last post with one about the overwhelming adorableness of baby hedgehogs, or one requesting your fondest love memory (my friend Erika nearly beat me over the head when I mentioned that one), or yet another about my newfound obsession with Wikipedia and the fact that Look! You can find out anything you want to about Buddhists and Dooce and vas deferens, all in one place!

But I came up with old people. That's right, old people. (Don't cringe, I'm not going to write about the freaking Notebook again.)

I was behind an elderly woman tonight at the CVS who was plucked right out of a 50's Woolworth's, party people. A summer hat, a pale polyester wrap dress, black nursing shoes and socks, and an accent that said she'd spent years drinking sweet tea. She greeted the young cashier with a smile and placed on the counter the largest economy-sized package of toilet paper one ever did see. My grandfather, a Depression-era survivor himself, horded and bought items in batches of at least 888, so this was endearing to me.

And then she did that thing that makes me want to lose it, and sweat, and beat myself about the head and face as I do only when THAT WOMAN at Giant FIRST THINKS TO TAKE HER CHECKBOOK OUT AFTER THE CASHIER HAS RUNG UP ALL 476 OF HER ITEMS AND TOTALED HER ENTIRE BILL. ("Do you have a pen?")

Beatdown, people.

She paid in change. And counted it all out. And would look over her shoulder every two minutes to see if we were still waiting.

Even my tampons were sick of standing up.

But then there are the old folks I love, like Elly who used to live at the nursing home I worked at after school when I was 17. Once a week, I'd paint her nails a lovely shade of whatever was in the donation box, parking her wheelchair on one side of me and Lucy's chair on the other. One particular day I was giving Lucy the grand treatment when I heard a moist chomping coming from my left side.

Crap. Coffee hour was long since over.

But Elly hadn't cheeked any sponge cake. Instead, she was gleefully and spiritedly and quite awesomely, I might add, chewing on two oversized cotton balls. All while managing the largest grin on her wrinkly, crinkly old face. And she was so going to swallow.

So naturally I screamed. I called for a nurse. And I did the dumbest thing a person could do other than pass out: I stuck my hand right into her mouth.

And so Elly then did the smartest thing she should have done to a dumb girl sticking a finger down a smart old woman's throat: she bit down as hard as she could. And only then did she give up the cotton.