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Daily Archives: July 1, 2015
I was waiting on the wife of one of my regular customers today. She’s always super sweet, & I’m invariably glad to see her. “Yankee,” I began, “her daddy was one of my regulars when I first started working down here. I didn’t know what to think of him. He used to say, ‘who’s your momma?’ All the time & tell me when I got married I was gonna hafta wash the skidmarks out of my husband’s drawers!” Yankee’s eyes got rounder. Clearly, she wouldn’t have known how to take him, either. I smiled at Miss Tammy, his daughter. “But I came to love him. He was a nice man.” She nodded. “Daddy was. I remember too, you & another girl from down here came to his funeral.” I paused. I had forgotten about that. “Yeah, me & Skeeter came. It was probably the first funeral I attended on my own.” (Meaning, without my family) I recall Shanea & I talking ourselves into going. We felt that we needed to. “My husband says I go to more funerals than anybody he knows,” I told Tammy. “But he understands now that my customers are like my family… They’ve seen me grow up, in a way. I don’t necessarily like to go, but I need to.” “…
I have just come from yet another funeral. Now this one was a little different. It was like others in the respect that the deceased was a senior citizen, and someone I knew through work, and there was no shortage of familiar faces paying respects. The difference was, I stood in line sniggering the whole time. I couldn’t help it. And yes, there’s a difference between snickering & sniggering. Snickering is when you’re laughing with somebody about something (or someone) but you’re trying not to. Sniggering is lower in the gut & deeper & knowing you shouldn’t be laughing & trying to stop. I thankfully got to Tuletta quickly & apologized, I didn’t mean any disrespect. I COULDN’T HELP IT. Tuletta’s mother was one of the biggest practical jokesters I’ve ever met & every picture they showed of her you could tell she was into some sort of trickery or meanness. Bows on her head, britchie leg yanked up, fluttering eyelashes behind Greta Garbo sunglasses. I kept getting tickled. The pictures made me think of my own memories…she was one of those ladies who carried her possessions in her bra. She’d embarrass Tuletta to death when they’d stop to get a biscuit before work & Hazel would whip out a roll of money from her cleavage. Tuletta was always afraid she’d go to diggin…
