I Don't Ask Much

I was walking down the street the other day on my way to the bakery, minding my own business, not bothering anybody, not littering the sidewalk, not making unnecessary noise, being a perfectly decent law-abiding honest citizen, when a lady stopped me.

“Your stockings are falling down,” she said.

I stared.

“Your stockings are falling down,” she said again. “I thought maybe you didn’t know.”

Now what did she have to go and do that for? I knew my stockings were falling down. I mean I’m not unconscious or anything. I just happened to choose not to notice that my stockings were falling down. Once I admitted that I knew they were falling down, I’d have to stop and pull them up, and that doesn’t look nice. As long as nobody actually stopped and pointed it out to me, I could just go my way to the bakery pretending I didn’t know.

Besides, what was she fussing about? She was lucky I wasn’t losing a shoe or a hem. Can I help it if I’m not neat?

Somebody is always taking the joy out of life. One day as I was going out, I noticed three men standing in the middle of the street staring at my house.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

One of them laughed. “That your house?” he asked on what I thought was a rather contemptuous note.

“It is,” I said, bridling.

“Well,” he said, “we were just lookin’ how it’s saggin’ there in the middle. Boy,” he went on, “you don’t get that porch shored up, you’re in trouble. Just look at that.”

I know the porch needs shoring up. Shoring up nothing, it needs rebuilding. It just so happens we need a new oil burner, too. And the roof needs fixing. And the whole house needs a coat of paint. And the children’s bureaus are falling apart. And the blankets are seventeen years old. And the living-room rug has a hole in it. Does he have to stand there and point it out to me? Maybe I should have invited him in, so he could go on a tour of the house and show me all the places where the wallpaper is coming loose.

The other day I was parking my car in the village (I know — there’s a dent in the front fender) when a man pulled up beside me and shouted, “Hey lady, you can’t park there, that’s a loading zone.”

I knew it was a loading zone. Did he think I was driving around blindfolded? I saw the sign. But it just so happened I didn’t feel like seeing that sign at that particular moment. Did he ever think of that before he decided to make himself such a good Samaritan? I’ll bet if I’d been stuck on the parkway with a flat tire he suddenly wouldn’t have been such a do-gooder. It’s none of his business if I just don’t happen to notice a sign. Let him watch out for his own driving. He nearly backed into that old lady, he was so anxious to point that sign out to me.

The other night my husband came home and for some unexplained reason happened to look at our children’s feet.

“Gee,” he said, “look at their shoes. They’re a disgrace.”

Well I knew that. They have been that way for months. So the heels are run over a little. So they need shines. All right, so they need new shoes. But they were happy. And they’re healthy. And they’ve had every shot there is. And they get a vitamin pill every morning. And they have warm coats for the winter. And mittens. And ice skates. And cameras. And watches. And good allowances. And radios. So their shoes are a little worn out. There were no holes in their socks. Now I have to take them all the way to White Plains, and I won’t find a parking space, and they’ll complain every inch of the way because they had some project they wanted to work on, and they don’t even like to buy new shoes, and I’ll have to drive around for a half hour looking for a place to park, and everybody will be perfectly miserable. And it will cost twenty dollars. And the salesman will sell me new rubbers and galoshes and sneakers and bedroom slippers and socks, and instead of twenty dollars it will be forty. And everybody was perfectly happy.

I know I need a haircut. I know the car needs a wash. I know that apple tree needs pruning. I know my handbag is open and a handkerchief is falling out. I know I just missed the train, lady. I see it, I see it.