My Life Just last week....

 "Call your sister" my husband calls my cell phone as I am driving home from "up island".  I am an hour and a half away and I have been ignoring my phone for hours.  Until I am done with my visit and get into my car which has hands free blue tooth so no laws are being broken.

"Why?"

"She's having a meltdown.  I couldn't hear what she was saying but she sounded hysterical".

I am concerned "when was this?"

"A few hours ago".

Damn.

I call her immediately and she sounds fine.  "Are you okay, what happened?"

"Didn't you get the pictures from Brandon?"  Brandon is my nephew, her son.

"No, what pictures?"

"Oh my God, this guy ran a red light and hit me. Totalled my car, I am sure of it".

I check the pictures on my phone "Oh my God sis, are you okay?"

"Yeah, just achey" she tells me "I took some Advil"

"did you go to the hosptial?"

"No, I'm really not hurt"

"Well how do you know?  Sometimes accident victims don't know that something happened until days later".

"No really the air bags deployed and nothing happened to me".

"Then why are you achey?"

"Because when the air bags deployed they really hurt my boobs"

My sister is large breasted.  She wears a DDD cup.  The air bags could deploy and not even reach my breasts but my sisters are way out there.  Apparently, if you are that large and air bags deploy, the force is powerful and the boobs are, well, closer.  So apparently, her natural airbags conflicted with the cars airbags and so she was achey.  BUT - she was alive and aches aside, totally okay.

 

See that kid there on the right? Well okay fine, he is not a kid, he's 22 years old and young adult. I am his mom, so he is a kid. That young man over there is racially mixed as many of you who have read my past hubs already know. Now with his facial hair, what would you guess him to be? Racially speaking of course...his background? And if you can, picture him with a goatee. That was more like what he had when he boarded the plane.

Recently Justin had to take a day trip to Virginia to settle some court business on a car accident that he had while living there with his dad. I did not want him taking days to do this by driving 8 hours there and 8 hours back and missing work, so I bought him a plane ticket. Exactly as he likes it, JetBlue, no stops. We stood at the Kiosk and I printed his ticket.

"You just have the carry on right honey?" I asked him as I tried to manuever through the instructions. I had never used one of those things before.

"No, I'm checking it in"

"Why?" I asked in my "thats stupid" tone of voice.

"Because Mom" he said rather impatiently "I didn't want to put all my shampoo and stuff in stupid little plastic bottles and I don't even know HOW I would do that with my hair spray and those are the rules and they're stupid and I am not doing it so I can't bring this on the plane".

I nodded with a blank expression on my face. "Okaaaayyyy".

After all I am the 50 year old moron and he is the 22 year old Genius. I know my place in his 'how can older people be so stupid' world. After all, I used to reside there myself.

"Oh wow, look" I say completely amazed because the little things in life thrill me. "They offer you seats with more leg room, want one of those?" I continue to check the information they offer "It's only $10 more for your seat!"

"Yes mom, of course I want extra leg room!" Again impatient, again I am an idiot. After all, he is 6 ft 1 and all legs.

When he is finally on line I hear them announce they are boading for a flight to Antiqua and since it is freezing outside I joke that I am going to go get on THAT line. Justin laughs a bit and we say goodbye.

He calls me three hours later. Everything is fine. They did pull him to the side to search him.

"Why?" I asked him.

"Why do you think mom, because of how I look"

"How do you know?"

"Seriously?" as in 'are you seriously this stupid??'

"Well I just don't understand, you did not take the bag on with you, you had nothing with you, why would they search you?"

"Jesus mom, look at me" I think 'who's stupid now, you're not even HERE!!'

"It's racial profiling. I look like i could be Arab or Muslim or whatever so they totally scan me with those body scanners and then pull me to the side to search me more thoroughly. They don't do that with EVERYBODY".

I blow it off. Maybe they just did that because he's a young kid and were thinking 'drugs'.

I pick him up the following night at the airport. He texts me when he has landed and I tell him where I am waiting. When he greets me he is clean shaven. "Justin!! Why did you shave your goatee? I liked it".

"Because Mom, I don't like going to court with facial hair. It just looks better if you're clean shaven".

"You're not a criminal for Gods sake Justin"

"Still" he says and now I realize he looks like he is 18 years old and could say he is Italian without raising eyebrows. So I have to ask "Did they pull you aside and search you on your way back?"

"Nope" he says it as if he knows why I asked.

"Interesting. With the goatee you get searched, without it you don't".

All he says is "basically".

I think perhaps he was correct. He was pulled aside with the goatee because he looks so different with it. He could be Muslim.

When I tell my friend Carol over dinner one night she says "Oh I don't think it's racial profiling, I mean they took my aunt aside and searched her and she is a small blonde white woman"

"Carol" I said the wheels in my brain turning furiously "Do you think perhaps they search people like your aunt so it doesn't look like they do racial profiling? You know, so they can say "Hey, we don't do racial profiling, see, we search elderly people too" or people like your aunt?"

Carol thought a moment "Well I suppose that is always a possibility"

Hmmm...yes it most certainly is.

I deliver food for Meals on Wheels. I am a back up driver. If they screw up the schedule or someone can't come in they frantically call me and ask me to come in. Last week they called me to do (2) Routes in one day. Each route is color coded; the red route, orange, black, yellow, etc. Each covering a different part of our town.

One day last week they called me to do the Red Route. I had never done the Red route before but I had a map and a GPS.

"This one has more people on it then the orange route AnnMarie" Gerta said "It's a bit harder"

"Don't worry Gerta, It's no big deal" I said and went down to load the hot and cold food into my car.

The route went smoothly and I had no problems. I was very careful to read about any special instructions. At the last house was Mr. B. He was right in town and after his delivery I could just run over to the Meals on Wheels main office and drop off the route book and empty coolers.

Mr. B. had a birthday a few days before and they gave me a little gift bad with flowers to give him.

I went up to his door and rang the bell twice. No answer. I knocked hard on the door as all of our clients are elderly and many hard of hearing.

"I'm coming!" called a gruff voice and I chuckled mumbling 'okay, okay'

Mr. B. opened the door shuffling with his walker. I glanced down at his walker and quickly looked back up. Was he? Did I just see?

"Meals on Wheels!" I said cheerfully.

"Follow me to the kitchen" Mr. B. said and turned around. Sure enough, he was not wearing pants.

Oh gosh, what do I do? Okay, okay, I am just going to do what I always do in awkward moments...act like I don't have a clue.

Mr. B. stopped at the wide entry to the kitchen and said "Right in here"

"Okay!" I am still ridiculously cheerful and smile constantly. "Here you go, oh you have a cat!" I say noticing a Fancy Feast can on the counter.

"Yeah" he says lowly "His name is Tom"

'Tom' I think to myself 'Like Tom cat, how original'.

"There you go Mr. B." and I turn to leave "You have a great New Years!" I cheerfully walk toward the door and Mr. B. walks to his food. At the door I realize I am still carrying his little gift, now I have to go back. I brace myself and go toward the kitchen "I almost forgot!" I say standing in the doorway. " Somebody had a birthday!"

Mr.B turned around and looked at me. "A couple days ago" he comments.

"Here you go" I say (mind you, I am still ridiculously cheerful) "A little something from Meals on Wheels for your birthday Mr. B."

"Ohhhhh" he says and again I turn to leave. "Have a great Day Mr. B."

I sat in my car wondering what I do about the fact that I just had a little conversation with a half naked man wearing nothing but a blue wife beater t-shirt and nothing else. Perhaps he had forgotten to take his medication?

"How did it go?" Gerta asked when I got into the office.

"Fine, no problems whatsoever, well, except one little thing"

Gerta looks up at me "What?"

"No one told me Mr. B. doesn't wear pants" I am half smiling. Gerta is staring at me blankly to see if I am serious and the look on her face is priceless.

"Well thats because we didn't know Mr. B doesn't wear pants".

She was apologizing and I told her it was no big deal, really. He might have been having an off day. It happens, etc. I just acted like nothing was wrong.

My husband of course freaks a bit "Why didn't you tell him to put on a robe?"

"Because I am not certain that he was even aware he wasn't wearing pants. I didn't want to embarrass him. The man is 80 at least for gods sake"

The following day Gerta is losing it. She needs a driver to do (2) routes. I agree to do them. One is the orange route which I am very familiar with and one the red route from the day before.

I am relieved when when Mr. B. opens the door wearing sweat pants and I realize that his personality is different as well. Yes, I would say Mr. B. probably didn't have his medication the day before and was unaware that he was half naked and now I am really happy I didn't point it out to him.

My husband is not electronically skilled. Actually, he pretty much can't do anything around the house. I hook up the cable boxes, the VCR's and even stereo equipment. I could write a list about the stuff I do that men usually do, but I won't. Let's just leave it at the stereo wires.

I was hooking up my husbands new stereo system to his Television and the 6 freakin speakers that come with it. I immediately notice that the 2 sets of necessary wires are absent. Now I have to take a trip to Radio Shack.

It is 7:45 and I have no idea when Radio Shack closes so I hurry over there. It is filled with people and I decide that instead of trying to find a salesperson I will look myself. I look for about 10 minutes and decide to ask a salesperson. I don't see them, but I want to be certain. I go over to a young girl I see who is not busy.

"Excuse me, I am looking for stereo speaker wires to connect to my television and I don't see them there by the other audio wires, they wouldn't be anyplace else right?"

She is explaining to me that she is not sure and pointing out two people who could help me when a man passes by behind me and puts his hand on my bottom. I turn quickly to my right to see him putting his hands in his pockets and I am just staring. I am shocked. I am wondering if I felt what I thought I felt. Like Mr. B. and his pants I want to be sure. After giving it thought for 10 seconds I realize I am 50 years old and I know the difference between someone bumping into me and an actual hand placed on my derriere.

I am staring blankly at that poor saleswomen and finally snap out of my mini-coma. "I'm sorry, I, it's okay, um...never mind, I don't think they're here. I just, you know what, never mind, Sorry" I leave the store immediately.

Later I will tell my husband that I can't believe I was flashed by a naked man and felt up by a stranger within 2 days.

All this week I waited and worried, but it went by without incident. Perhaps because I didn't go out much and stayed away from the news. Nothing to flash me, feel me, or rile me up.

Life really is good, if you manage to avoid it altogether.