So I was at the mall yesterday, in the food court, just getting a burger to tide me over until Mr. Rilch could come get me. Anyway, I saw a quarter on the floor and bent over to pick it up.
And when one of the aging hippies at the nearest table chortled with glee, I realized I’d fallen for a very old trick. But hey, I got to keep the quarter, and they didn’t try to follow me or anything, so it’s all good.
But what gave me pause as I was walking away was that I could have sword I heard the other aging hippie call out, “Parton!” Granted, I was wearing a rather low-cut dress, so the moment must have been rather similiar to the scene in 9 to 5 when Dabney Coleman knocks the pencils off his desk so he can look into Dolly Parton’s cleavage while she’s gathering them up. But DP’s not really the gold standard for boobage these days, is she? So I think these guys might have been showing their age (in one sense). OTOH, “Pamela Anderson!” or “Anna Nicole” don’t come as trippingly off the tongue.
About 20 years ago, my desk was alongside the agency accountant’s, a heavyset woman with a sense of humor that matches mine.
My father, meanwhile, was starting tomatoes under fluorescent lights in our cellar, and, thanks to our local water being treated six ways from Sunday, putting up tap water in gallon milk jugs to allow the chlorination/fluoridation/alum-ation/etc. to settle out before using it on the tomatoes. The accountant saved up empty gallon jugs and brought them to me to take home to Dad for his tomatoes.
We had a true MCP on staff. So at 5:00, she gave me the gallon jugs and we were picking up to leave, when he came walking through and questioned the purpose of the jugs. She didn’t bat an eye, just delivered: “Didn’t you watch Dolly Parton in 9 to 5? To be a good secretary, you have to have big jugs!”
He left with his tail metaphorically between his legs.
