Nice (but slightly crazy) lady at Friendlys
So I’m out with my girlfriend and her 2 kids, at Friendly’s (a local casual dining and ice cream chain), enjoying “sprinkle time”… ice cream… possibly with sprinkles… we’re just about buttoning up the event, when this older lady… hard to peg her age… I’d say 65… maybe more… but rail thin, and kinda sickly/Crypt-Keeper-ey… comes up, and tells me what a lovely family I have.
Well.. My GF knows this lady is kinda asking for it… but… she keeps quiet.
I tell the lady, “No, I don’t.”
“Oh, of course… Don’t say that! They’re lovely!” She says enthusiastically.
“No, They’re not mine,” I say. It should be glaringly apparent… I have dark hair, hazel eyes and tan readily. The kids are blond and fair-skinned, just like mom.
The older lady’s no listening, because she’s too busy telling me how blessed I am by god to have such a lovely family.
So… I kinda thumb at my GF and say, “They’re hers.” She sheepishly raises her hand.
At this point, the boy pipes up, and reports that I don’t believe in god, nor does his mother, nor does his sister, nor does he. “We’re atheists!” he reports, gleefully… heartily… so the whole place can hear..
With incredulity, and without missing a beat, the nice lady asked how we could not feel the touch of god’s loving hand. I readily thought of a couple reasons, but kept them to myself… but I really couldn’t help laughing. The kids were laughing. My GF was laughing. It really was comedic… I mean, this lady was… like… on the prowl to say something nice to a man with a family on Fathers’ Day… and she picked me. She couldn’t be more wrong… and every time she opened her mouth, she just dug the hole that much deeper.
I sort of felt bad for her, her good intentions going oh, so wrong. But we were all laughing so hard that none of us noticed her walking away.