Everyone But Me

People are crazy. I'm always asking myself: why can’t they be normal like I am? Why don’t they do things the way I do them, the right way, in other words?And I know what I’m talking about. I get around. I go to laundromats for example. I watch the way people stuff their clothes into those washing machines. Crazy! SOME people – people in my own family, in fact - crowd up a washing machine like you wouldn’t believe. In go queen-size sheets, a few bath towels, a mattress pad, all in one load, and how is it going to get pounded clean THAT way?  I’d rather make a dress out of newsprint and wear that around than put on some of the clothes I’ve seen washed like that. Also, you hate to say it but a lot of people are crazy and nervy both. Young people, I'm thinking in this case. Young female people.Who are my children. They won’t wear stockings, even in winters as frigid as this one just past. Their legs are purple. But will they listen if you mention this fact to them? They will NOT. And they then have the nerve to frame ME as some kind of throwback.  They even mock me, for the nice Queen Size Suntan pantyhose I happen to be sporting. Which, by the way, are wonderfully warm. AND make my legs look great. “Sausage casings!” they hoot. “You’re wearing sausage casings!” And speaking of nervy, Get this: I'm at the leotard-and-dance-shoe store stocking up on Zumba essentials this one day and I ask the clerk if she can point me in the direction of the tights.“I’ll fetch them for you,” she says. “How tall are you?” she then asks, and I give her the same answer I gave at age 16 to the Registry cop who was filling out the paperwork after my road test.“Five-seven,“ I said to him at the time, thinking, ‘Why not round it upwards, Terry? You'll grow more …’So, “Five-seven " I say to the clerk. “Five-SEVEN?!” pipes up this perfect stranger beside me at the counter. “I’M five-seven and you're totally shorter than me. Plus, look. I'm in ballet shoes and you're wearing a boot with a heel. You're no five foot seven!” I handed over my money and hurried away from that dame fast.Damn fast, I can tell you.So see what I mean about people? Nervy and crazy both.Because isn't a girl free to say what height she is?I’m five-foot-seven! A cop said I am. He wrote it down. And his word lives on, right here on my license.  :-)