~Wednesday~ I got my 30-minute walk in today by walking from my office on Hillsborough Street down to the Cameron Village Library, where I returned The Art of Racing in the Rain, which I finished last night and was due today.
I dropped the book in the “Adult Books Return,” which always sounds like a porn depository to me. It also bothers me a little that its neighbor drop box is labeled, “Children’s Books Return”—the annoyance specifically being the lack of parallel construction in the label names. Albeit, I supposed they’re both written correctly. But I digress…
I started my walk back, during which I was going to make a stop at the Harris Teeter grocery store to buy some Crab Queso Dip that was on sale as part of today’s “Fresh Catch Club.”
As I walked by The Fresh Market, a lady pushing a grocery cart with her little girl in the child seat part of it, aimed it toward me and upon approaching said a little distraughtly, “She’s stuck in there. I can’t get her out.”
I looked at her with one of those, “Are you talking to me?” looks, and she said, “You look like the type of person who can figure things out.”
My thought, which I kept in my head, was: “What does someone look like who can ‘figure things out?’ And how exactly am I exuding that look that’s so obvious to you, yet so incognizant to me?”
I asked her to hold on a second while I stopped the stopwatch on my phone, which was timing my walk, and then I approached the adorable little girl strap-trapped in the seat.
Hover over image for photo disclaimer.
The little girl didn’t speak at all; she just watched in wonder as if she, too, could see those highly sought-after “figure things out” skills that made me the quintessential candidate for her rescue.
As I pushed what looked like a button to free the clasp, which I’m sure the mother must have done, she said, “I mean I’ve tried everything. I put her in these things all the time. I’ve never had trouble getting her out before.”
I moved away from the button that wasn’t a button to two little tabs on either side of one side of the clasp, and I pressed them inward to open the clasp.
The mother exhaled audibly, obviously relieved and she stepped forward to hug me, which I thought was a little much (and I’m a hugger), but she stopped herself, put her palms together in front of her chin, but fortunately did not start, “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple.”
What she did do was protrude her derrière, affecting a Lady-san bow with her palms intact, and said, “Thank you.”
I strutted away like the figure-it-out-stud that I obviously am.