Life can get pretty mundane for a retired single woman with little or no life. When walking the dog is the highlight of my day, as it will be today, something as insignificant as finding somebody’s shopping list lying face-up on an Atlanta sidewalk can be inspiring!
I can learn a lot about a person from his or her dropped reminders-to-self. Look at the memo paper. It either had a frightfully long flight from San Diego to Atlanta, more than likely catching a tailwind from the most recent storm system, or it came along in the moving van with the family that owns it.
La Jolla Country Day School is a dead giveaway to the general background of the original owner of that memo pad. Anybody who has access to that school, whether it’s being the headmaster or being the homeless guy who rifles through the school’s trash dumpster, is used to living a bit larger than their more average American counterparts. Just being from San Diego, California sets this careless shopper apart from the average Joe or Joanne.
Then take a look at what’s on the grocery list. Could it get any healthier? I suppose this person could be preparing a nice snack for the Easter Bunny, but it is far more likely the author of this brief but healthy list of vittles is a card-carrying health nut who fits right into this hippy-dippy neighborhood of mine. Don’t be thrown by the cake at the bottom of the list. I would bet my next Social Security check it was going to be a carrot cake with carob chips and yogurt frosting.
I can even make some educated guesses about the person who wrote this list. It’s a younger person who didn’t learn cursive writing in school, as we of a certain age did. Many of the letter “a”s in the words are left unclosed, indicating a person who is always in a hurry, but not enough to resort to the use of shorthand or word abbreviations. The writer is probably left-handed, given the slant of the printed words. And, for reasons I cannot explain, I believe this was written by a male.
Pathetic as it may seem, this fortuitous find got my creative juices flowing. I started mentally constructing the typical shopping lists of certain well-known individuals who would rather be caught dead than found wandering around my chic but profoundly urban neighborhood clutching a shopping list.
What I see:
Egomaniac
Megalomaniac
Jerk of the highest order
Greedy dirtbag
What I see:
Space cadet
Barbie without the rack
Dumber than a box of rocks
What I see:
Sick puppy
Delusional wannabe
Hopeless addict
Wasted talent
I can learn a lot about a person from his or her dropped reminders-to-self. Look at the memo paper. It either had a frightfully long flight from San Diego to Atlanta, more than likely catching a tailwind from the most recent storm system, or it came along in the moving van with the family that owns it.
La Jolla Country Day School is a dead giveaway to the general background of the original owner of that memo pad. Anybody who has access to that school, whether it’s being the headmaster or being the homeless guy who rifles through the school’s trash dumpster, is used to living a bit larger than their more average American counterparts. Just being from San Diego, California sets this careless shopper apart from the average Joe or Joanne.
Then take a look at what’s on the grocery list. Could it get any healthier? I suppose this person could be preparing a nice snack for the Easter Bunny, but it is far more likely the author of this brief but healthy list of vittles is a card-carrying health nut who fits right into this hippy-dippy neighborhood of mine. Don’t be thrown by the cake at the bottom of the list. I would bet my next Social Security check it was going to be a carrot cake with carob chips and yogurt frosting.
I can even make some educated guesses about the person who wrote this list. It’s a younger person who didn’t learn cursive writing in school, as we of a certain age did. Many of the letter “a”s in the words are left unclosed, indicating a person who is always in a hurry, but not enough to resort to the use of shorthand or word abbreviations. The writer is probably left-handed, given the slant of the printed words. And, for reasons I cannot explain, I believe this was written by a male.
Pathetic as it may seem, this fortuitous find got my creative juices flowing. I started mentally constructing the typical shopping lists of certain well-known individuals who would rather be caught dead than found wandering around my chic but profoundly urban neighborhood clutching a shopping list.
What I see:
Egomaniac
Megalomaniac
Jerk of the highest order
Greedy dirtbag
What I see:
Space cadet
Barbie without the rack
Loose cannon
Nouveau riche biche Dumber than a box of rocks
What I see:
Sick puppy
Delusional wannabe
Hopeless addict
Wasted talent
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