My very dear, very southern, friend who lives in my neighborhood, and I went out to dinner tonight.  She is a constant source of amusement.  The funny thing is, she says the same about me.  Anyway, she was feeling house bound after her recent eye surgery and all of the complications that have ensued and she still can’t drive so we went to get a burger.  Now, first of all that is what she says…”let’s go get a burger”…but she has yet to order one.  We go to her favorite “burger” place and she orders almost anything else off the menu.  I don’t know if just any hot sandwich is a burger (you know like some people think that any brown cola is a Coke) or if she always thinks she’s gonna get a burger and then when she reads the menu something else just sounds better. 

We went to a local restaurant that has recently decided that it would rather be a little fancier than it was.  You used to be able to go in, order at the counter, get your own drinks, and sit wherever suited you.  Now they ask that you Please Wait To Be Seated.  You know what we learned last fall about Lipstick and Pigs.  It’s still just a little mom and pop no matter what they make you do before your butt gets in the booth.  So we were finally seated and ordered our sandwiches (no burgers were harmed in the eating of this meal).  While we were discussing the short comings of the people seated around us, a lady walked in with her hair back combed and jacked to filth.  For those of you who don’t understand exactly what I mean…think the B52’s (band not plane).  Now my dear friend was seated so that she couldn’t see the woman’s face, just the rat’s nest that was the back of her head.  “What does the front of her look like?” she barely whispered.  I kind of mouthed, ”you’ll have to look on your way out.”  “I think she has socks up in there” she said a little louder than before.  In a moronic attempt to cover up what we were talking about I said, “well girl’s stuff their bras with all kinds of things.”  ”What in the world are you talking about?” she nearly shouted.  “I was talking about that awful head of hair.”  Well there is no covering that.  I just looked at her as the realization that she wasn’t even attempting to whisper came to her.  “Well, shit.” she said.   I just looked at her and said, “that about covers it.”

She’s a hoot and a half.  She swears she doesn’t get embarrassed, but I think she was a tad red over that.  When we did get up to leave she certainly didn’t turn around and look.  I was actually kind of surprised.  I figured her curiosity would get the better of her.  She just kept right on walking though.  Right out the door and into the car without a word or a glance in that woman’s direction.   I figured at that point she might as well have just sat down with her and had a conversation about her poor choice of hair style.  It wasn’t like the woman thought we hadn’t noticed.  

Well, after dinner she wanted to go to Walgreen’s and look for reading glasses.  Well, I took her and she found a lovely multi-colored pair with rhinestones (don’t ask) and an equally lovely pair of sunglasses with huge lenses that she swore reminded her of Sophia Loren.  As we were walking out the door (which is surrounded by the magnetic anti-theft detection devices) she began beeping.  I stopped just outside the doors and looked at her and said, “what the hell did you steal now?”  I sincerely wish you could have been there dear ones, to see the look on her face.  She said, “I can’t believe you said such a thing.”  I just looked at the little girl who had checked us out.  I told her to check her panties, “that’s where she hides things.”  My friend is cracking up.  She said “just check my panties.”  I thought the poor thing was going to faint.  I told her that it probably was a magnetic tag on the eyeglass case, which she ran through the system again and we walked out just fine.  But, once we were in the car we discussed the fact that thieves just don’t know what they’re missing out on.  If they would just get a seventy year old granny as a partner they could hide the goods in her panties because no one in their right minds is going skivvy dipping in granny panties.

It’s probably just as well that we don’t go out alone a lot, but we always have a lot of fun.  Well, I do.  She always laughs.  I assume that means she’s having fun.  It could be that nervous twitter that a lot of people get when they’re around me.  I don’t really know.  What I do know is that she’s not feeling house bound any more, and I got my dinner bought for me.  It seems like a win/win.  She swears I told her when we first met that she needed me to be her friend because all of her friends were old and they would be dead soon and then what would she do?  I can believe I said that, I just can’t remember it.  What I do believe is that in some ways she’s younger than me…maybe just less mature…Oh Lord, help us!