Fruitcakes

I have adored Jimmy Buffet’s ludicrous Fruitcakes ever since I first heard it a couple years ago.

Just for the sheer joy of it, I have to share two fruitcakes whom I met in the past couple days.

Fruitcake #1: One of those people that you pray you never have to sit next to on a Greyhound. As near as I can remember, this is a rendering of the 100 yards of sidewalk I shared with her:

God it is a glorious day. Isn’t it a glorious day? These are the kind of days you just live for, you just want to live for them the whole day. Oh your hair is just the color of that tree. It is so beautiful. How did you get hair that color? Oh, it’s yours? Oh my god, that is amazing. Your hair is soaking wet. Why is your hair soaking wet? Oh you do yoga. I have always wanted to do yoga. I used to be a runner and can’t run any more so I thought that maybe I try yoga. My gym that I belong to has yoga classes and I have thought that one day I would take a class there you know. It seems so calming and soulful. What type of yoga do you do? Oh hot yoga. I am not sure that I could do hot yoga. I’m at the stage in my life when I have having hot flashes, you know, and I am hot enough all by myself. I’m just my own little sunball half the time, and if I had an episode in hot yoga I just do not know what I would do. Oh this is your office? I used to work in an office. Well, I guess I’ll be going then. It was so nice talking to you. Just so nice.

Fruitcake #2: An older gentleman, in his mid sixties, riding a bike to work in the rain. He had a full rainsuit; rode an expensive Dutch commuter bike; and wore a helmet, waterproof gloves, and a large messenger bag. His large, blanched feet—completely bare—were pedaling viciously.

The problem with fruitcakes is you don’t have their stories, but they beg you to write them. I’m sure Fruitcake #2 had a good reason for cycling barefoot in chilly rain—perhaps he had an important meeting to go to and didn’t want his new shoes ruined with damp. Perhaps he had given his shoes to a homeless man. Perhaps he was one of those barefoot distance runners and was translating it to biking.

My own appearance at that same intersection also had its irrationality. In a rainsuit, on a bike, with a helmet and messenger bag, I was wearing only one waterproof glove; my right hand was covered in a Richmond Times Dispatch newspaper bag.

The explanation: I had lost my right waterproof glove last week. My grandmother’s good friend, knowing that we have a dog to pick up after and will soon be charged for plastic bags in DC, collects and sends us, via my parents, all her plastic bags. She gets the Richmond Times Dispatch delivered daily, so we have a ton of thin yellow newspaper bags. A newspaper bag fits snuggly over a biker’s hand, impeding brake access only minimally. It was a perfect.