Yesterday I took Scarlette with me to run five hundred and forty two errands so I decided that we would take a little break. We were sitting outside of the Starbucks in the mall enjoying our white chocolate mocha frappuccino (me) and our pumpkin bread (Scarlette) and smiling sweetly at the other mothers who walked past giving me the side-eye for feeding my tiny baby food from Starbucks.
(Oh, I know that look. The one that says “I would never feed my child anything but organic chicken that I raised in my backyard and killed with my bare hands.” That is the look of a) my former childless self and b) mothers who do not have 19 month olds who eat nothing but bread and purees. If she puts it in her mouth by herself, she can have pumpkin bread ’til she turns orange, that’s what I’m saying.)
Anyhow, there was this sweet little old lady sitting next to us that Scarlette was enjoying playing with when her daughters and grandaughters descended on us, chattering and depositing all of their shopping bags. And then as suddenly as they came, they left and the little old lady was sitting there alone at Starbucks surrounded by a mountain of bags and tissue paper.
When I got up to leave she reached out and grabbed my wrist.
“Help me” she said.
Prior to getting our order the little boy Scarlette had been playing with in line had a seizure and I carried his things out for his mother while she laid him down to wait for it to pass. So feeling leftover anxiety after that I immediately thought “Dear Lord, please do NOT let this little old lady have a heart attack right now.”
Turns out she just wanted to go sit on a couch. Which is understandable seeing as how the wooden chairs at Starbucks aren’t the most comfortable things in the world. Only her family had left her there with all of their shopping bags. The couches within viewing distance of the Starbucks were full so I told her I’d ask someone to move for her but she said no and insisted I take her to the ones further away. So I loaded up the stroller with all of the shopping bags, precariously balancing her, her latte and her walker and we set off, Scarlette peering over the top of a bag from Victoria’s Secret.
I got her situated on the couch and asked if her family knew where she’d be but she just kept kissing my hand telling me that I was a kind girl (which I wasn’t. Anyone who’s not like, a murderer or a puppy-kicker would help a little old lady.)
I was a bit worried that her family would freak out when they arrived back at Starbucks to find her missing so I decided to go to customer service and let them know where she was.
Which makes sense, unless you are working at customer service and don’t KNOW all of that back story and then some random girl comes up to you and says “Hi, I just left a little old lady on the couches by the hair salon, if anyone wants to claim her.”
