A cute story...

Of my many ideas I'd like to follow through on sometime is writing a book or two...and one would be a collecting of short stories and musings, based on real-life situations I've run across...situations that are humorous or striking in some sense, even if in a simplistic way, that speak to the human spirit, sense of community, etc.

I dug this one out of the files, a story I'd recollected in preparing it for an audition. Thought you might get a chuckle out of it too...

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For this morning’s FINAL THOUGHT, I mused back on a conversation I overheard while traveling through South Carolina’s Low Country, over 20 years ago.

Don’t recall the sleepy little town on a back highway, only that it was big enough to have fast-food restaurant…but just one. It was a weekday morning around 9:30am when I decided to go inside, get a biscuit and some coffee, and grab the morning paper just to take a breather. I love to travel that way, taking the road less traveled and at an unfrenetic pace.

And so I commanded a table by a window with only 2 other people in my dining area that looked they had been sitting there for quite some time. I suppose their morning rush of die-hard patrons had already come and gone…all 12 of ‘em by the looks of things.

The elderly gentleman closest to me a couple of tables away would alternate between slowly stirring his coffee and then looking through the large windows at some distance...and I’m not sure if he was actually looking at anything or just reflecting inside his head.

His elderly ‘friend’ was about 4 tables away had his back to the windows and was turned at a slight angle…and so was the setting for these two acquaintances as they eventually exchanged a very slow and drawn out, pause-filled conversation that I've heard many a time in the sleepy South...in a hurry to go absolutely nowhere.

(after some time of silence)

"How’s Mary doin’…she out of the hospital yet?"

(pause)

"Yep, last I heard she was doin’ better. Thought I’d go by later today and take her a pie or somethin’…"

(pause)

"Went to that new Food Lion they put in south of town…pretty nice…."

(pause)

"Ain’t been yet, but I aim to…"

(bigger pause, and more coffee stirring…)

"Did you figure out why your transmission was slippin'?"

(pause)

"Don't really know...Burtons flushed it out and it seems to be workin' okay now..."

(...and then came the clincher for me…)

"You gone and voted this mornin’?"

(pause)

"Nope, ain’t had no time to yet."

I thought I was going to snort the coffee out of my nose.

May all your priorities today be so carefully chosen today!