For the Amusement of Strangers

My sister Margie and I grabbed a quick bite at Taco Cabana today, over by Burnet and 183. It was midafternoon, and not many other people were in the restaurant. And we were talking very frank girl talk, and I did notice after a while that the two guys a couple of tables over from us were being completely silent.

Well, it's good to bring a little happiness into the life of a stranger.

Margie was telling me how she was just at Mount Bonnell the other night with this guy she really likes, but he has a girlfriend. Still, apparently he's willing to hang out with her in a city park at 3am, so who knows how long that's going to last.

"We found some guy's cell phone there," she said. "Just lying on the ground. We used it to make a bunch of crank calls."

She's actually my half sister.

I reminded her of the time she lost her cell phone near the hike and bike, and a jogger found it, and called the first person in her address book - Beth. And he waited there until I arrived to pick it up. And as he handed me the phone, I noticed that her tagline at the top of the screen was "Chicken Fucker," which he didn't comment on, and neither did I, because what can you really say about that?

So wouldn't karma dictate, I asked, that she track down the guy whose phone she had found and give it back to him?

"Oh, we got it to him," she said, picking idly at a scab on her palm. "He was really happy! We just crank-called a bunch of people in his address book first."

"What happened to your hand?" I asked her.

"Oh," she said, "I scraped it up on Mount Bonnell, trying to get loose when I caught my foot in a crack in a rock. I was like this," and she demonstrated, lifting one leg above her, "and as if that weren't bad enough I was wearing a skirt..."

If the guys at the next table were laughing, I couldn't hear them over myself. "And you were with this guy you have a big crush on?!"

"Plus I was having my period," she went on. "So I'm there with my foot over my head and my skirt around my waist and a big pad saying, 'Turn around! Turn around!'"

We're different, Margie and I. I'm pretty sure that if that happened to me, I would just write off the crush and never see him again. True love isn't everything. But she seems okay with it.

I expect the guys at the next table were impressed.