Arrestingly Beautiful

Coming back into town from a client meeting yesterday I slowed to pull into the market to drop off a whole bunch of plastic bags for recycling.  Because I knew my client visit was going to be mostly a lot of driving with a fairly short time on-site, I had Lucy with me.  She loves to ride.  I tilt my driver's side mirror so that I can watch her muzzle flap in the wind when she sticks her head out the window.  She slays me.

I wait for a local police vehicle traveling west on Route 1, signal my intention to turn, and pull into the parking lot.

The police vehicle pulls behind me into the lot.

I proceed to troll the lot for a parking space - which are much fewer than is normally the case because (1) it's blueberry raking season and (2) it's August on the coast of Maine.

The police vehicle stays right behind me.

I finally find a parking space and pull in.  The police vehicle pulls adjacent and stops.  OMG.  A light out?  No seat belt?  That adventure in Alaska finally, after 35 years, results in charges? 

I get out of the car and the officer walks around in back of my Honda.  "Hello there, officer!" I say, smiling broadly, a huge very full plastic bag full of other plastic bags in my hand.  "How are you doing today?"

"Great!" he says.  "Hey I don't mean to hold you up or anything but I absolutely HAD to ask:  Is that a Griffon you have there?  I used to have one and they are THE BEST dogs!  Well, actually, it was my wife's dog.  It came with my wife.  They are just the best.  Is that a Griffon?  I don't mean to hold you up..."

Ignoring my impulse to snicker at his insistent use of the words 'hold up' I explain Lucy's Labradoodle heritage while she decides if she is  going to stick her head out the window and deign to let someone in uniform pet her.  She decides to growl.

"Now honey," I say.  "Don't be mean to the nice policeman."  She changes her mind, sniffs his hand, and pants while he pets her.  "She sure is pretty," he says.

"People often take her for a small Newfoundland or a Portuguese Water Dog," I say.  "She's almost five years old and she gets more wonderful everyday." 

"Well she sure is pretty," the policeman opines.  "I just had to ask.  Don't mean to hold you up.  You have a good day, now."

I'm in the market for three seconds with the bags and I remember I need olive oil and it would be nice to get some Maine Ginger Root Brew.  In the aisles I see a friend, a new lesbian in a new relationship. We talk.  She's trying to understand the mind bending / heartrending turmoil she went through with her very first lover a beautiful trophy girlfriend who was probably also a borderline personality.  Yeah, I say.  Been there got that t-shirt.  We trade stories which mostly boils down to 'no, you're not crazy'.  I suggest that, since she and the trophy have been broken up for over a year, she might program her phone to reject this woman's daily calls.  That and other stuff.   Ninety minutes later I still haven't started looking for Goya olive oil.  We move to that aisle and happen upon another friend, a dog person, who has recently found a little lost collie.  We're all dog people.  The new lesbian and her new partner, with whom she moved in after four months, have eight dogs between them.  We commiserate.

The market in my town carries neither Goya olive oil nor Maine Root Ginger soda.

I go out to my car empty-handed to find the battery dead.  Apparently I'd been so freaked about the policeman that I'd neglected to entirely turn off the car.

Open the hood.  Within seconds there's a woman pulling into the next parking space says hey what's the problem I have jumper cables.  We hook them up.  Nothing.  I'm visualizing  many many many dollars flying away to repair alternator trouble.  A few more seconds and some guy comes over and says sometimes you have to wiggle them.  He reaches in and does the wiggling with the jumper cables.  My car starts.  Everyone cheers.

On the drive home I explain to Lucy about how I'm so deeply grateful that I'm past the place in my life where I'd be prey to another trophy girlfriend and that if she, herself, wasn't so beautiful none of that in the parking lot would have happened. 

She sticks her head out the driver's side window.  I watch her muzzle flap.