Val's Power of Attraction Cannot Be Denied

Let the record show that Val's Weirdo Magnet continues to pulsate, as strong as ever. It was pulling in fresh weirdo meat at the Gas Station Chicken Store on Monday, and not the line-jumper kind.

I had approached from a different direction, having returned from a doctor appointment and early voting. So I was coming in the back alley to the parking lot, having to drive past the air-hose parking spot to get to the handicap spot in front of it. A truck was parked by the air hose, and I couldn't go around it to the handicap spot because a white convertible was parked all cattywompus beside it. Perpendicular, almost. And a guy had that air hose stretched across behind the truck, to the rear tires of that white convertible.

Well! That was a fine kettle of flat-tired fish! I had to swing wide behind the white convertible, circle around the two diesel pumps, and park nose-first in the handicap spot. Thus I had a perfect view of the action. The gal in that white convertible fired it up, and drove past T-Hoe to go out the front entrance of the Gas Station Chicken Store parking lot.

It was a little inconvenient, but I had my spot. No need to drag my blood-sample-depleted body across the lot from the moat. I reached into my purse for my winning scratchers to cash in, and was startled by a tap on my window!

What in the NOT-HEAVEN? It was that guy swinging his pink hose! He looked like a scarecrow in jeans and a plaid shirt. A tall, gangly man with a 1950s country-singer haircut. (Says the ample-rumpused Val, all smug with her lovely lady-mullet nearing record length.)

"Do you need air?"

I put the window down a crack. "No thanks. I'm fine. Just going in for lottery."

"All right then. I would put it in for you."

He continued to swing his hose. It was completely off the rack, and I suppose it might have been twisted. Surely there was a more efficient way to untwist it, rather than standing 20 feet from where it was connected, twirling it in an arc like getting ready for his rope-turning half of a double-dutch contest. He finally took a couple steps forward, so I could get T-Hoe's door open and climb out.

Was he scary? No. He reminded me of one of our old custodians who always put his arm around my shoulder and called me Babe. Not in a demeaning way. That's actually how he talked to all the female staff. Like, "Here Babe, let me get that for you," while you were wrestling the furniture around the classroom. It was a different time. Like Baby says at the beginning of Dirty Dancing, "...and it didn't occur to me to mind."

Anyhoo... that was a first. Having a random dude tap on my window to ask if I needed air.

Oh, well. It takes all kinds of kinds, as the Miranda Lambert song goes.