Can Angels Cast-On?

He had toothpick legs that contrasted with his more than ample girth, and when he pushed himself up from his wheelchair he defied gravity. He wheezed as he walked the few steps to the bathroom. Yet if someone has asked me whether he was in ill health I would have replied "No" without thinking.

We taught him to cast-off but for some reason he never learned to cast-on. He didn't even seem interested. Instead he would come in and buy yarn and more needles, and have us start a half-a-dozen scarves for him all at once.

He was the kind of customer that stays with you, not because he is the nicest or spends the most, but because he was a character. I only met him two or three times but he sticks in my mind more than some I've met a dozen times.

He was unfailingly polite and would send sweet thank-you notes that we didn't want to throw away but didn't know what to do with. He always wished us love and peace at the end.

Now that he's passed away I'm glad of whatever urge led me to save the last thank-you he sent me. In the card there was a goofy photo of him holding up one of our store bags, with his name and the date neatly penned on the back.

I'll keep my memento tucked in with my yarn.

Love and Peace Bill.

Sometimes I Want To Hug Customers

A woman came into the store the other day and when I asked for her last name so I could ring her up under her account she said, with some sweet indecision, that she kind of wanted to change the last name. She really liked her new name. I encouraged her to do so, and discovered that she'd gotten married almost a year ago.

I then changed this very Caucasian lady's last name to a very Japanese last name. Of course that piqued my interest and we chatted just a little about Japan and Japanese-Americans (her new husband is a nisei, second generation).

"I did everything right the first time," said this older woman. "I married a Jewish doctor and had kids right away. Then after I was divorced I thought, I really am attracted to Asian men."

Random Desires To Shave My Head

For some reason The Cranberries have been on my mind lately. Finally remembering all that technology has to offer I head over to YouTube and rediscover one of my favorite music videos when I was younger:



Now I want to shave my head.

And be Irish.

And have a nice voice.

But she can keep root-man. That's a little weird.

I kind of saw a dead body this morning...

The helicopters were the first clue.

We went biking on the path this morning and there was the usual unusual.

A bronzed couple with platinum hair and awkward gait that made us both think of Star Trek: The Next Generation passed us.

There was the muscular Rasta man on his roller blades and the other muscular, shirtless, non-Rasta as well.

Two film shoots were going on, a hotel was draped in funeral black and down the road quite a ways was a half a dozen trailers.

A man wearing only his bathing suit jumped from rock to rock by the ocean in his bare feet.

And then there were the helicopters. A lot of them. Right above us. A moment later Tech Support noticed the police cars in the distance, and I noticed that PCH was empty. Totally empty. PCH is never totally empty.



As we got closer to the police cars we saw they were all regarding a pile of something on the ground and taking measurements around it. A nondescript sedan drove up.

"The detective just arrived." Tech Support commented. I looked over, hoping to see Brenda Johnson, Lenny Brisco or even Goren. But there was just a bunch of men.

We road on, because we didn't want to be gawkers, but we were slower than usual.

"Did you see anything?" I asked.

"Looked like a pile of clothing." Tech Support said.

"They don't close down PCH for a pile of clothes."

At the end of the path we watched the police divert traffic from PCH onto Temescal. The cars were backed up as far as I could see, all along point Dume. I was too distracted to sit and stretch. I'm weak and prone to morbid curiosity, I wanted to bike by and see the scene again. I wanted to be a bystander in an episode of the crime shows I watch far too much.

So we rode by again, heading back to the car.

"I think I saw a shin." Tech Support said.

"Was it a man or a woman?" I asked.

"It was a sexless shin."

At the distance we went by, keeping up the pretense that we weren't atrocity tourists and not stopping, we couldn't make out much. Tech Support thought it looked like a pile of clothes with a body in it. Maybe someone had been murdered and dumped on PCH. Maybe a kidnapping had gone wrong. There had to be a twist of some kind.

Past the accident everything was back to normal. No one knew what was just a mile up the road.

A British man walked on the path speaking into his phone. "Sheila has to be notified."

A couple hugged, and when they parted I could see the girl had been crying. She wiped at her eyes.

A midget homeless man walked along the edge of the sand.

We passed the Star Trek alien people again.

Back at the car and I called a family friend who is known for being awake and watching TV early in the morning.

"PCH? I can tell you about that," she said.

She told me it was a pedestrian vs. car situation. As usual, the pedestrian lost. A hit and run around 6am, two hours before we even pulled into the parking lot. The victim was a young transient who may have been hit multiple times. PCH was closed for a bit and all the other freeways in the area were congested as a result.

So no murder or kidnapping. Not even a twist.