I am told almost daily that I need to go on the outside more often.  I am beginning to yield to the encouragements I am receiving.  Sadly when I do, the experience is less than stellar.  I don’t expect bells to herald my coming or to find flowers strewn in my path, but can I not be harassed?

Recently I yielded to the voices and at precisely 11 am, on Monday may 9^th 2016, I took a stroll to the neighborhood Diner. My Physician had only just praised me an hour before for my efforts in managing my blood sugar levels.    I felt glorious. The weather was just the way I appreciate it. A bit of nip but not enough to cause discomfort.  The trees shook their leaves as gently as they could to make me look up at them, soft, light green and very tender. Were I a Giraffe, I’d graze.  Every tree in my neighborhood was fluffed up with pride and the joy that only Spring can deliver.  Spring is always the start of something big.

I arrived at the Diner and the very friendly waitress greeted me warmly. I seated myself in my favorite booth which I felt was my personal space.  This was where my granddaughter and I would sit some afternoons when I walk her home from school and she wanted to indulge in a Cheeseburger while she read her current book.  My own home-bred bookworm.  I would watch over her as I sipped what the Diner said was tea. Always I’d have remind myself where I was.  Once I voiced my disdain about the tea and my very old nine-year old responded very gravely without raising her eyes from the book, “Grandma, don’t be a hater”.  I kept quiet after that as far as tea was concerned.

Feeling secure in my refuge and with the praise of Dr.  Rabinowitz still ringing in my ears, I was settling in for some kind of satisfying low-calorie brunch when a shadow loomed above me, and before I was able to process the nature of the apparition, it slithered in the empty booth across from me as a fully formed man, and draped himself full length in the seat reminiscent of Dixie Carter in Cabaret atop a piano.  With most of his thirty-two teeth exposed in a leering smile, he drawled,

“Did you come in here all alone?”

“I did” was my answer, I continued to stare at him while a thousand questions lined my face.

“Did you really come here alone?”

“Did you not hear me say that I did?”

I heard a tiny creak as if a door had opened in the recesses of my mind.  I recognized the acrid smell of Sulfur. Lucifer had come into the Diner. I knew this was the time to decline help from him but I opted to let him stay for old times’ sake.  Times before I had mastered myself and had replaced him. Still, he liked to hang around when situations around me became cloudy as they were becoming in this instance.

“I can’t believe you came in here alone”!! The harassment flowed effortlessly.

“Incredible! Lonesome beauty. May I join you? There is so much we could talk about.”

His deep bass did have a melody to it and I mused on how he would sound if I made him scream.  I also realized that I was becoming quite agitated and about to bite my lower lip; a significant clue to my state of mind. Lucifer smiled and drew closer because he too knew all the signs of my old repressed inability to tolerate annoyance at any level.  Would he rekindle his relationship with me?  I shrugged away the idea.  I preferred my new Philosophy.

“Would you mind sitting elsewhere?”  I heard my voice.

It was too low and too pleasant, a fatal end-stage signal.  I was slipping.

Out of nowhere another voice entered the scene, “Mister Willis, are you annoying my customer?, kindly go sit somewhere else, shame on you”.

The Waitress’ lisp was pronounced when she said the word ‘shame’. Mister Willis grinned wider and straightened up his form, he had no shame.   I watched him out of eyes that were now slits.  So close.  Too close.  This man traveled so much into my space and now he was going to get off scotch free.  As I processed an old memory came forward. The acrid smell left the room.  I sighed and watched Mister Willis unwind himself from the booth.

“Have a lovely day beautiful one, enjoy whatever you plan to have, I wish I were your mouth”

I sighed again and let the storm pass, and went back to looking at my text messages.

I needed something satisfying to assuage my pain and suffering. I unclenched my jaws and I ordered Pancakes and Sausages.

I guess Dr. Rabinowitz would never know. If he did, surely he would not fold his arms across his chest, feet apart and deliver a lecture on ‘How Diabetes destroys the body from the core’. Surely he’d understand my need for a fix.

So much for going out into the world.  Is this why some White Southern Fathers at graduation give their daughters little pink guns that fit snugly in their purses as a rite of passage?