If someone tells me they’re bored I usually assume that they’re just not curious. How can you be bored when there is always so much going on? And I’m not talking about world events or the latest in pop culture and technology.
I’m all about being intrigued with the minutiae of our daily lives. Trust me when I tell you there is a lot of weird stuff happening right in front of you. All you have to do is look up from your phone.
A good place to find a compelling character is the McDonald’s drive thru. A couple of mornings ago there I was waiting in line for my Diet Coke when I became so enamored with a fellow drive thruer, I turned into what might be described as a bona fide stalker. Because if you tail someone from McDonalds for miles that’s stalking right?
Don’t answer that question because the bigger query is how could I not have followed this person?
There I was minding my own business, waiting to execute a precision merge from two drive thru lanes to one when I glanced towards my right and I noticed a fascinating human. There was a woman, I’d peg her as late 30’s, doing some serious in car grooming with not one, but two pairs of tweezers.
She was a duel-wielding dynamo.
When I first started staring she was precision plucking her eyebrows. Then she totally raised the bar when she veered south and attacked her chin. The woman had to be ambidextrous because each hand was tweezing in unison with the other.
I couldn’t look away.
A part of me wanted to get her attention. I felt duty bound as a very middle-aged woman to shout, “Hey lady who doesn’t even look 40 I don’t think you need to worry about rogue chin hairs just yet. Give it ten years and then welcome to my world.”
I also want to get closer to her car because her tweezers looked professional or even medical grade. They were super pointy and I wanted the inside scoop. Were they even legal tweezers? From the looks of them they had to be a hybrid of scalpel and tweezers. Maybe they were scalpweezers (scalpel + tweezers)?
I had to learn more about this woman. Who tweezes with that much finesse, sheer artistry and enthusiasm in public. Because attention to all who inhabit planet earth. It’s not star date 2266. Your transport pod doesn’t have a cloaking device.
As soon as I saw her pay at the drive thru window while still tweezing I knew I had to follow her.
I didn’t even try to stay two car lengths behind because I was certain she wouldn’t notice the tail due to the fact that she was now driving and tweezing! Granted she was tweezing with only hand now, but still is was quite the road show.
Things got interesting as we went down a two lane road. At every stoplight she would grab her coffee and take a sip while still holding her tweezers. At this point I felt I like I was doing some sort of community service because one wrong move and she could stab herself with those scalpweezers.
Finally, she noticed me noticing her and it got awkward. I smiled and mouthed “nice tweezers.”
It didn’t go over that well. As soon as the light turned green she accelerated, gave me what can only be described as the middle scalpweezer and tore off.
I can only hope that she didn’t injure herself completing the trifecta of tweezing, driving and drinking coffee. Days later I’m still wondering about this woman. I’ve been keeping an eye out for her at the McDonalds drive thru because you never know what’s going happen while you’re waiting to get a Diet Coke.
Snarky in the Suburbs 