Driving to a dinner party, she rounds the corner and sees a man walking a very large tortoise. Or perhaps a tortoise walking the man. Still can’t be right. She keeps driving for another minute then doubles back for another look. The man and the tortoise vanished. One moment they’re walking on a residential sidewalk and the next, they’re gone.
Once inside, the party is in full swing. The hostess runs over and gives her a hug. She asks the hostess if she is aware of any turtle walking in her neighborhood. The hostess playfully calls her silly and also playfully, stuffs eggplant bruschetta in her mouth.
~
It’s been the running theme for the week. Casually observing the absurd.
Yesterday she bent down to pick up a dirty penny. A strange looking dirty penny. That the internet identifies as a ‘Large Cents Flowing Hair, Chain Reverse’ coin worth 1k – 10k.
The van whizzing past on the interstate had what looked like corpse hands hanging limp atop the bumper. The man driving in front was having an animated discussion with the lady next to him. Even though the corpse hands looked only very slightly fake, the fact they were there was just…unusual.
There was another thing. What? Right. The hobo. She was walking to the ferry terminal. The sadly common sight of the city’s vast homeless population all to obvious. One sitting against the chain link fence, legs stretched out as passersby walk around and sometimes over his protruding limbs. With a sharp intake of breath, she will breeze right past him. All of a sudden he awakes with a start, locks eyes with her and starts hollering, “HEY! Does Charlie know you’re out? Hey! YOU!! Yeah, you!!!!” Her pace quickens. Then she sees him get up and breaks into a run. He’s following and screaming about Charlie, until further away he gets. Looking behind her, he is an angry exclamation point dotting the horizon.
She calls and orders another pair of the same contact lenses.
