Nehaveigur

The body shop where I was picking up my car is on the wrong side of the highway. The neighborhood is nondescript in the worst way. It consists of ugly warehouses, car dealerships and carpet stores. It’s a depressing place, and there’s no reason to go there unless you need to buy carpet in bulk or your vehicle got scraped in the Target parking lot and needs repairing. As I was driving back with my newly un-dented car, I saw a lady driving a scooter on the sidewalk. At least I think it was a lady. She was wearing a pink headscarf, a pink coat with a floral pattern, red lipstick, and large glasses from the 1990s. Her look may have been inspired by Mrs Doubtfire, but her behavior wasn’t. She was loudly singing, or maybe cursing. It was hard to tell from my car. The scooter she was driving at full speed down the sidewalk was not a standard model either: It was going much faster than I’d have thought possible. The whole image was so unexpected and surreal that for a moment I thought I was hallucinating, but when I checked my rearview mirror, I could still catch a glimpse of her pink coat as she was disappearing behind a box store advertising whirlpools.

It’d be nice if more people wore eccentric outfits.  Sometimes when I get coffee in the morning there’s an old gentleman in a perfect white summer suit, looking like he stepped out of a time machine. Seeing him, and other people who made an effort, always cheers me up. I’m not leading by example, because most days I wear jeans and a tucked-in dress shirt. Maybe this is a project for when I’m old enough to not embarrass my wife or daughters: Assemble a wardrobe of eccentric outfits and wear them around town, with no purpose other than to delight those around me and give them something interesting to look at.