Monday, August 27, 2007

Overheard in Philadelphia, Part II

Late last week I was hurrying from the Starbucks on Main Street in Manayunk to the Christie's Nails, in pursuit of an eyebrow waxing. My tunnel vision is so severe that I rarely see what's going on around me (excellent trait for a writer, in case you were wondering), but suddenly a young man clad in large jean shorts and a baseball cap caught my eye. He smiled at me for a moment.

Then he beckoned across the street. "Now that's something you don't want to see here," he said, shaking his head.

On a bench on the opposite side of the road, an Indian man sat with a turban on his head; arms crossed. He was dark-skinned and could very well have been Arabic.

Oversized Jeans looked expectantly at me, waiting for my reply. Oh, the things I should have said, had my brain been functioning! Had I not been caught off guard, making a beeline for a waxing!

Instead, I just smiled wanly and shook my head disapprovingly.

"What?" He asked, a bit defensively. "I'm an American!"

He said it. I didn't.

No comments: