Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

What a good girl am I!

Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007
3:18 p.m.
I was a good Samaritan today. Well, no, not really. More of a helpful stranger. It happened like this:

In my attempt to regain a sense of fitness and divest myself of some of the accumulating fatness, as well as take advantage of the beautiful weather that global warming has seen fit to bestow upon us, I betook myself into town once again with the object of taking Buddy Boy’s jacket (this is a silk dress jacket which he somehow got very dirty at the New Year’s party he attended and which he subsequently tossed in the laundry pile, unaware that it has to be dry cleaned at someone’s expense) and buying postage in order to mail my driver’s licence renewal, which is due on my birthday later this month.

I discovered that Canada Post has introduced a new stamp, called a P-stamp (for “permanent”) which, once paid for, never needs to be augmented in the event of a postage hike. I purchased ten of these little rectangles, using one immediately to mail off my cheque to the SAAQ. Postage right now is 51� to mail a letter in Canada. On the 15th of January, it goes up to 52�. These P-stamps will be worth whatever regular postage is. This makes me think I should go back and buy a whole lot more before the 15th if I want to save money. My favourite clerk was behind the counter, but due to the presence of another customer, he had to keep his flirting to a minimum.

I dropped the jacket off for dry cleaning, peered inside the new Tim H0rt0n’s (yes, our wee town now has one of those right smack on the main drag) and wondered if this meant Java was going to start losing business, except that the customers I viewed inside Dead Tim’s were people I had never ever seen inside Java, so maybe Sam will be fine after all, and bought some items on sale in another store on the main drag. Then, turning my feet homeward and giving Mr. Beattie a wave through the barbershop window, I decided to turn down the street formerly known as Dépôt, and that is where I saw a young woman carrying more than she could handle, dropping things, picking them up only to drop other things, and so I offered her a hand, since I had an extra that I wasn’t at that moment using.

She was carrying stuff that she had picked up from the Sears counter, so had already walked quite a distance overencumbered as she was, but I took the two pillows and accompanied her to her apartment building, before continuing homewards myself. We chatted about the weather (that’s what Canadians do) and how she had just arrived from Victoria, having been home for the holidays, and how it was colder there, being Canada’s usual winter hot spot, than here, where we would normally have a foot of snow and below-freezing temperatures. Très bizarre.



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