Crisp and Dry

Sand fiddler crab (c. Laura Harrison McBride 2013)

Crisp and Dry. That's what the packet said. The packet

contained some sort of cracker

I thought. She shoved me

a bit, snarled, "Pardon me." I was standing beside

an open bit of supermarket conveyor belt

she wanted to put her groceries on right then

and she did.

Banged each item down.

It was my fault the cashier was slow and

the man in front of my husband was

having a conversation and

ignoring his duty--that lady might have said--to

hurry up and move on

on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

So she slammed food onto rubber, pursed her lips...not that it

made any difference. Puckered, she was. Coated 

with an invisible layer of 

age dust. Crisp and Dry.

Lips pursed, wrinkles darting right left and centre refusing to

let go their disapproval. Colourless eyes, colourless glasses.

Straight short grey hair stuck

out in clumps, badly cut. Grey wool slacks bagged at the knee. Shapeless 

jersey in some muted colour. Mint green? Lavender? No matter.

No makeup. No jewellery.

Crisp. And dry.

Widow? No. Women of her age, having lost

a spouse, keep up their looks in hopes

of meeting dear Fred in heaven. Spinster, probably.

Crisp and Dry.

Not crackers. Cooking oil. Solid stuff, hydrogenated. Deadly, 

slowly. Her cooking would be crisp and dry, 

veins hardened like her manner in time.

People say, often, that crabby old people are crabby because they are old.

I think they are old because they are crabby, crisp and dry.