I sat the bar of a local oyster house, eagerly awaiting my assorted kusshi, wellfleets, and miyagis, when a very old woman sat down beside me. Although she hadn’t yet opened her mouth, around her hung the fog of a person who is always on the edge of saying something, anything, whether it makes sense or not.
She was a regular and apparently had a running gag with one of the dishwashers: they liked to argue about the value of Barack Obama. He was the straight man to her antic hilarity. “When he opens his mouth,” she said excitedly, while waving a vinegraitte-sopped salad green on the end of her fork, “yakety, yakety, yak, fat fancy words, and nothing gets done!” Oh, how she laughed, an air-splitting cackle that caused everyone nearby to turn and look.
After ordering breaded sole (whatever that is!), she settled into the topic of Obama’s pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey. “He said, ‘I’m gonna eat that sucker.’ Can you believe that? His daughter said a president can’t say that. Can you believe he said that?” The waiter (whom she knew) diplomatically told her to chill out and get over it, which lead her to regale us with her 60-year old conviction not to eat meat. She was hardly a vegan, if the cream in her chowder or the sole on its way were any indication. But boy did she understand CAFO beef and chicken, apparently from having lived near one, in a farming community that depended on the economy of thousands of animals crammed into shit and sickness every day.
My oysters arrived. I now could wrap myself in a pardonable anti-social cloak, that of the single-minded hungry male who’s about to chow down. At this point, the woman patted me on the shoulder, bid me watch her purse, and slid down the aisle behind me. It took me a while to figure out that she had stepped outside the restaurant and was bending over my Beagles, who were waiting beyond the door.
I stepped away from my plate to get a better look and just caught the old hag closing a jar filled with cat kibble!
She had been fast, that one. I was going to chastise her for feeding my dogs without my permission, but I just wanted to eat my oysters and leave. Did I mention how inappropriate it is to approach strange dogs with food, let alone cat food?
Just as I was waving for my check (good food, slow service at Anchor Oyster & Seafood Bar), I saw the old woman scoop some of her breaded sole into a napkin in her hand and head for the front door.
This time, I was ready. I practically knocked down two patrons trying to intercept the speedy little hag, but I reached her at the door, tapped her on the shoulder, and asked her not to feed my dogs.
She looked like a foiled child who had just been caught pooping on the carpet.
Following me back with her little parcel of dripping fish, she started to tell me how much she loved animals. I wanted to tell her I love animals too, especially when I’m not feeding them a diet of cat kibble and breaded sole. But my check had arrived. So sorry it couldn’t have lasted longer. Gotta go.