Who Am I?

Do you ever have those moments where your words or reactions do not match the person you believe yourself to be?

I had one yesterday.

Driving along, heavy afternoon traffic, on our way to someplace that doesn’t matter at all. We are chatting or listening to music or a pod cast, when we something catches both of our eyes. Suddenly we are aware that we are captive, the light saying “stay” even though we want nothing more than to move from this spot. We look, look away, and look again.

The Boy Scout says something funny and we both laugh nervously. The sight before us is a bit shocking. She’s on the sidewalk dancing….sort of. Is it a she, he asks me. Well, I see nothing there that would tell me different. 

There is a trash can box. You know, the kind of metal box that has a locked panel that is opened when the trash person comes to empty the bin inside the metal enclosure. It could almost be mistaken for a street Mail Drop box but a little bigger. Half of her, the top half, is inside the box. The bottom half, the dancing half, is out, in all its glory, bobbing up and down. So basically, all we see is two butt cheeks and upper thighs (the lower parts of her legs still have pants on them) and her…….hair. With a mixture of emotions, I do what I do when I’m uncomfortable and get verbal diarrhea, “I wonder if the drapes match the carpet”. We both giggle but I know I’m not proud of it, using someone’s gutter moment to joke. She’s someone’s sister, daughter or mother. She’s a human and it goes against my heart to use her circumstance as a chance to joke.  Ugh!