A funny thing happened on the way to the car

Our businesses generate a lot of paper, so we occasionally have an outing to MV, one of the nearby towns, to take it to recycling and buy business supplies at Walmart.

We have to drive 16 miles (one way) to do this because the people who were running our town once upon a time were not very visionary. Walmart wanted to build a store here, but the town fathers (one of whom was a mother) said no because they wanted to protect the local business owners. That was was an admirable--but dumb--decision, because it didn't stop Walmart from approaching MV, which was happy to accept. So, not only did our town loose a few local businesses, as the town fathers predicted, it also lost the revenue that Walmart would have generated. A few years ago when Dollar General Store wanted to build a store in town, the people who had taken over from the Old Guard were at least smart enough to say yes.

The other reason we have to go to MV is that just about the time the new crew of people running things were saying yes to Dollar General Store, they scrapped our booming recycling program. Huh? What? Yep, they canceled recycling. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

And no, I am not a big fan of Walmart. I have lots of opinions about Walmart that I will keep to myself for the time being. But, one thing that we have discovered recently is that Walmart is not always cheaper. One of the items on the list was $1.50 more at Walmart than it was in town. But that's not what I started to write about (the lure of the rabbit is too much to resist sometimes)

As we left Walmart, two older teenaged boys were walking toward us; heck, maybe they were in their 20s, I can't tell any more. When I saw them I was reminded of Germaine Greer's book about menopause. I had picked it up at a yard sale for .25 cents and skimmed through it. I didn't read the whole thing because I don't particularly like her, but she had a few points to make, one being that women of a certain age become invisible to younger men. Most women in their mid-50s and early 60s, unless they are stunningly beautiful or noticeable in some other way, really are off the radar of these younger men as far as sexuality is concerned. And this is right and proper. After all, even though we may have sexuality oozing out our pores, we are not potential breeders and are probably close to age of their mothers and even (gasp) grandmothers.

I was thinking about this idea of being invisible as we walked along and the boys passed, and I watched them not watch me--I mean, their eyes didn't even flicker in my direction, which is not surprising because I am most definitely not stunningly beautiful. I am a frumpy middle-aged woman. At that very moment--and I am not kidding here or making this up--we heard a wolf whistle coming from the parking lot. And I laughed to myself.

Well that's perfect timing, I thought, but whoever it is that is whistling cannot possibly be whistling at me.



Well OK, well maybe it wasn't as funny as this movie, but it seemed funny at the time, for a while at least... At any rate,

I didn't bother to turn my head to look, but Richard did. And he sees this guy in a truck waiving his arm out the window.

It was Lynn, and he had whistled at Richard. We walked over. Lynn teased us. We laughed. It was hilarious.

But the hilarity was dampened a little. He told us he was waiting for a call to tell him that a prescription for his wife had been called into the pharmacy at WalMart.
Judy is very sick with a cold. Even a simple cold can be very serious for her because she can no longer cough, and I don't think she can "blow her nose" either. She has to be suctioned.

And then it got even more serious. The day totally stopped being funny. Several years ago Lynn was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. They harvested a bunch of stem cells. He went through chemotherapy and had a stem cell transplant. His hair grew back, and the cancer went into remission. Then the cancer came back. He went through another round of chemotherapy and another stem cell transplant. His hair grew back, and the cancer went into remission.

Lynn told us he got some bad news this week. The cancer is coming back, and there are no more stem cells in reserve.

Lord, have mercy.