I’m wearing a new scent these days. It’s called Eau de BenGay. It’s not for the faint of heart, but although it might make your eyes water and your clothes rot, I like it. I slathered some on my knees the other day, knowing I was in for a lot of walking. We were shopping for a new outdoor fountain, as the old one sputtered its last bubble last year.
I don’t remember which garden shop we were in, God knows there were so many, but finally I found what I was looking for. A problem arose when the sister and I could not determine if it was solar or electric. She insisted there would be information stating such on the outside of the box, but we couldn’t find it.
The sister couldn’t muscle the cumbersome box around to see the back, and I like personal attention while shopping so I hollered “Help!” After ten minutes or so, a nice girl came over and asked if she could help. We explained our dilemma, and she hooked on to the box and flipped it upside down and sideways. Nuthin.
I asked her if she could open it up. She replied, “That’s against store policies.” I gave her my old people pout, hemmed and hawed, shook a little, and told her to think of me as her “poor old mother”. The girl said, “What’s that scent you’re wearing? It does remind me of my mother.” She horsed the fountain over to her register and sliced it open. Just as she removed the last of the Styrofoam, her manager came over and asked her what she was doing.
The sister high-tailed it over to the pansies, because she can identify a confrontation a mile away. I used the old age defense, explaining the poor girl was only doing what I asked, I couldn’t get out that much anymore with my bad knees, I really needed the fountain but didn’t want to have to return it, taxis were expensive, blah blah, blah. The manager said, “Why didn’t you just look at the display?” Smartass.
So, I bought the fountain, along with $100 worth of other junk that just seems to hop in my basket while I’m browsing. While helping my sister and I jam all our purchases into our tiny vehicle, the manager commented on my perfume. She said it reminded her of her grandmother, and asked me what it was. I said “Eau de BenGay”. She thought that was pretty funny, and laughed all the way back to the store. I was going to tip her before she did that.
We arrived home, put the thing together and filled it up for the test run. I like to put food coloring in my fountains, a suggestion by a Floridian in-law of the sister’s. We stuffed some ferns around the back, and threw a couple of floating lights in it, and voila! Too damn pretty to put outside. I said to the sister, “You know what this means?” She rolled her eyes and nodded. “Another shopping trip for an outside fountain.”
I plunked my tired bones and swollen knees on the couch. The niece drove in shortly after, and I couldn’t wait for her to see our lovely new fountain. She opened the front door, looked at the bubbling beauty, sniffed the air and said “I smell old people”.
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