Stranger Truth than Fiction

Possible trigger: mention of incarceration

That spring. It was mid-May, as I recall, and I was three years out from a romantic breakup that had shattered my personal world along with my psyche. It was a lovely day that spring day, and I was returning my shopping cart to the carousel at Aldi’s grocery where you push a quarter into a lineup of oversized steel carts to retrieve one, and return the cart to retrieve your quarter after the shopping is done. That day in spring, I believed I was recovered from the breakup, and I wanted, possibly more than I wanted anything else in the world, to find another love partner. But, seeing as I’d met the significant other of my last failed partnership in the sketchy fishpond of online dating, I was not on any dating sites, and finding a person of like mind seemed challenging at best. I was well past the age of 50 and didn’t have a lot of bright ideas about a WHERE to meet a so-called Mr. Right. Pushing my cart towards Aldi’s entrance, I glimpsed a man passing by. My impression was both vague and visceral. I noticed his youthful gait and the self-confidence in his walk more than anything else. As I remember it, I was wearing sunglasses, so felt the freedom to gaze freely on his features as we passed each other. His eyes were on me. Or so it seemed. “Nice,” I said to myself. I was surprised at his attention. 

After returning the cart, I ambled back to my rusty red 25-year-old Mazda, pleasantly energized by the sight of that attractive passing stranger. We hadn’t smiled but our gaze had briefly merged. On the back bumper of my car were two bumper stickers. They, like my road-beaten Mazda itself, were leftovers from the failed relationship. 

I was surprised, indeed near shocked, to find the stranger in his baseball cap standing there. I don’t remember who spoke first, only that he eventually said, “I like bumper stickers and I was just reading yours.” 

“I like bumper stickers too,” I said. 

The sticker on the left side of the bumper was the handiwork of my former partner. It read, “George Orwell was right”. I couldn’t count the times I’d been stopped by a gaggle of total strangers in the intervening years since the day we’d received both stickers in the mail and he’d pasted them to the back of the Mazda. The strangers always voiced enthusiastic comments about his dark Orwellian message, often referencing the times we were living in. I assumed that the handsome stranger was also duly impressed. 

But I was wrong. It was the sticker on the right hand side of the bumper that he was talking about, and that one was written by me. It read, “What is the sound of one dog laughing?” This weird question was followed by my first initial and my last name. It was a nonsensical attempt at provoking a Zen-like experience in any reader and was formulated out of plagiarism on the old saw, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It also incorporated the fact that my partner’s German shepherd appeared to laugh when he’d scratch behind her ears while simultaneously cooing doggy-love sounds. No one had ever commented on ‘my’ bumper sticker in the years it had been in place. It was my opinion that most people didn’t ‘get’ it, and I didn’t blame them. It was obscure. I realized it was obscure, maybe even foolish. But, isn’t Zen? I was used to people not getting it. However, this was the bumper sticker that my newly acquainted self-identified bumper-sticker-lover was focusing on. To be precise, he was focusing not so much on the inscrutable canine-related question, but on my name that followed after it in an extremely small font size. He said, “Young? Is your last name Youngman? 

He then said his name was Derek, Derek Youngman, and that his ancestors were from Sweden and Holland. I thought to self… Holland and Sweden??? I’d never met a soul in my life with that background… even though I was raised a military brat and knew people from all over the world. I told him my name then, and yes…the last names were spelled nearly the same, his being the simple addition of a “m”, “a” and “n” to my own. 

Then, thinks I to self -"Why is this guy talking to me?” There was a moment of profound silence in my typically busy mind, a pause in the typical flow of thoughts and impressions as we stood there together beside the rusty Mazda. Then came another thought. “Maybe,” Mind whispered, “Maybe he just escaped from jail.” 

“Good Gawd,” thinks I to self. “That’s ALL I need, is to meet an escaped felon in the parking lot of the Aldi’s! What if this guy follows me home???” I had been living alone since the breakup and though I longed for companionship, conversation and maybe

something more, my imagination, untamed as it was (and hopefully ever-shall-be), did NOT accommodate itself to the inclusion of dating felons. Aspects of my last relationship had come close enough to that for me.

Now I was on guard. Still. He had such a lovely smile. And he seemed friendly and open. Once more, my mind asserted itself. ”Yeah. Your last relationship wasn’t at all what you THOUGHT it was… WAS it??”

So I stuck my hand out, and when his hand met mine and we shook hands, I made my grip about as strong as I could, hoping to give him the message that I was a woman who could take care of herself when called to, and that I wasn’t interested in a man who had just escaped from jail… and maybe… maybe not interested in a MAN. At all. 

“It was nice meeting you,” I said.    

And after he muttered something I don’t remember now, he turned and walked away. I turned back to the trunk of my car, stared at the bumper stickers, walked around the car, opened the driver’s side door, got in and started the engine.  

It took me about three hours and talking the incident over with two different girlfriends and my sister to discern the fact that maybe…just maybe… this guy was just a guy who’d made eye contact with me in a parking lot and maybe…just maybe… he was just being friendly and having a short chat with a woman who he found somewhat attractive. Even if she was possibly ten years his senior. 

And maybe, just maybe… he wasn’t a felon after all.

…

It did turn out years later that he was a retired jeweler whose home/shop was located in a small mountain town notable for its ski slopes and wealthy tourist trade. Though tourism took off with even more of a bang after he retired and sold the building, the town refused to tear the old place down. Why? Prior to his owning the property, it had, for years… been the town Jail.