Monday, August 27, 2007

Mannequin Driving

I pulled up at the lights the other morning. The sky was finally blue and the sun was still quite low in the sky, shining in through side windows of the car. I looked in my rear view mirror.
Behind me was lowered black car. (I'm a girl, I don't need to remember makes and models.) A young guy with a cap was in the driver's seat. The shadow of his cap and the sun streaming in through his driver's door window cast his face in a warm light.
His head was tilted slightly to the side. His chin jutted out over his neck. He didn't move, he was completely still with no expression on his face. The light made his skin appear like smooth plastic. He looked like a shop window mannequin arranged in position.
As the lights changed the car driving mannequin followed me down the street towards the mall.

At the Supermarket

I was at the supermarket, looping my way up and back down the aisles. As usual I was seeing the same people over and over as we leapfrogged (or should that be leaptfrog?) each other, picking up what was on our lists.
Rounding the end of lane I came across an older lady. Well if she was your mother you would probably still remember her as young but as a stranger she was middle aged. I had seen her in the last aisle with her husband when he'd been pushing the trolley.
Just as I was stopping to buy biscuits, the husband arrived around the corner with the trolley. His wife looked at him in surprise. "Whose trolley is that?" she asked, looking down at the one she had.
He tried to explain but in the end just laughed turned the trolley around and took it back to the previous lane. I don't know if he just abandoned it or maybe there was another shopper holding a can of something looking around for their trolley that had mysteriously glided off.

5 Favourite Sights Seen

  • 1996 Watching tropical lightning turn night to day, outside a little wooden church in a small village in Sabah.
  • 2004 Flying down the Rainbow Valley at 8000ft in a cessna on a clear blue day.
  • 2003 Seeing and hearing Michael Schmacher rolling out of the pit garage in his Ferrari in Hungary.
  • 2009 Chancing upon 100 or more dolphins just off the Kaikoura Coast swimming around, jumping out of the water, doing somersaults and generally having fun.
  • 2006 Finding a pool at the bottom of a waterfall in the bush at Kaikoura that was full of playing baby seals.