When Strangers Attract

Good thing I don't wear a watch. The unbridled magnetic force flowing from my pores might gum up the works. I could derail a maglev train. That stands for magnetic levitation, for those of you not in the scientific know. But we're not here to discuss timekeeping gadgets and speeding locomotives. We're here to learn about Val's latest suitor encountered in a retail setting.

No, it was not a woman who stroked my arm and told me I was SO PRETTY. Nor was it a man who tried to hand me a wad of cash at the grocery-bagging counter. Nor a man on the parking lot telling me about his upcoming supper of spaghetti and salad, the ingredients which his brother was gathering from inside the store while my suitor waited in the car.

The location for this illicit tryst was...um...let's just call it Voice of the Village. The convenience store where I sometimes get my 44 oz. Diet Cokes for free, because I have connections. This being Friday, the official start of the weekend, I was treating myself to the magical elixir after a trying day in the trenches, teaching freshmen on school picture day, and shopping at Walmart with every other yayhoo in the dang county.

As I walked to the front door, a spring in my step and a styrofoam cup for refill in my hand, a tall light stranger followed me. I held the door open a smidge after entering. He thanked me. And followed me to the soda-dispensing wall, where he broke the ice. Not literally. That cube dispenser has been inoperable for at least a month. Crushed is the way to go. Small talk ensued upon our mutual fillage, his being a meager 32-ouncer. Lightweight. I could not discern whether he was a lonely, out-of-town stranger looking to pick up a woman for his Friday night, or a friendly gay guy. Let the record show that I go about my daily life unencumbered by my wedding ring, but that I do not look like a dude.

"Gotta have the styrofoam cup here in the summer."

"Yes. I was here every day this summer for a refill."

"I wish I could have been here every day."

"Well, I'm a teacher. So I had the summer off. But I'm paying for it now."

"I live in Webster Groves. But my heart is here. I have a farm and a horse."

"Oh. We just have goats and chickens."

"Are goats hard?"

"No. But they eat everything. Even the bark off the trees."

"You don't have trouble with coyotes eating them?"

"No! They're indestructible. We had one give birth to triplets, and nothing ate them."

"Do they eat cedars?"

"Oh, yeah! They'll eat the bark clean off."

"I have issues with cedars. I was five when I rode my first pony. It wasn't mine. My dad said, "Jump on if you think you can ride it." And I did. And that led to me getting my own horse. I had to clear a field, and build a hay barn. Those cedars are hard to keep out of a field. The conservation department talked my mom and dad into starting a Christmas tree farm, with a plot of cedars. I have thirty acres."

"We have twenty together, and another ten up the road. My grandma and uncle used to have a Scotch Pine Christmas tree farm. My uncle worked for the conservation department. Goats will eat up small cedars, and strip that bark off the bigger ones. Then you can cut them and use them for posts!"

"That sounds like a good idea. I saw some goats grazing from the highway, up by the sawmill."

"They'll clear things out. That's for sure."

My stimulating conversation had to end when the clerk finished up with the old lady ahead of me. She kind of looked like Tweety's grandma. Bluish hair. Tiny thing. After paying, I turned around, and my new suitor had left the line behind me, and was perusing the chip aisle.

I'm not sure what to make of him. He didn't even say goodbye.