Big mouths3

Quite often a fat lady who walks with a cane greets me during my run. She has two dogs and she likes me very much. Whenever she sees me, she always has the same question: “Hey, don’t you feel cold?” Each time I give her a smile and say, “No, no.” By that time, I have run past her. Even if she sees me twice in the same day, she greets me with this same question, and I tell her the same thing.

This morning, at around 7:15 on our street, I saw this fat lady and her dogs having a real fight with another lady and her dog. The other lady was thin and seemed to be a little aristocratic. Let us say the fat lady is my friend, since she sees me every day and she likes me and talks to me. When the dogs started coming near each other, my friend said to the thin lady, “Don’t you dare come near me.” The thin lady replied, “Shut up, you big mouth!” Then, the fat one, my friend, threw her cane at the other one and said, “To hell with you!”

I finished my run and stood there watching them. As the thin one was leaving she said to her own dog, “You also have a big mouth!”

Now I had to sympathise with the fat lady because she was my friend. I went about 15 metres over to her cane and picked it up and gave it to her. She was very nice to me and said, “I knew all along you were a nice guy.” She was giving me a compliment. By that time the other lady had gone away.


RB 3. 5 December 1978