Vitamin A

Vitamin A.

Something tickled the back of my neck. A fleeting note of wrongness on the plane, a new window into some vast absurdity.
I closed Killer Angels and slowly turned my head to look for that absurdity over my left shoulder. An elderly woman, perhaps in her mid-seventies, sat in an aisle seat. She had not succumbed to the Old-Lady-Bob-Hair-Trend. Her hair hung long and limp across bone-sharp shoulders, and the sunlight from the portals discovered an ancient gleam of strawberry at the roots.
The object upon her dessicated lap inverted rightness.
The woman was hunched over a number 10 can of chopped spinach. The can had been raggedly opened; a serrated circle gleamed with green juice. While her toothless jaws repeatedly mashed together, dripping juice, she dug into the huge container with a wooden spoon.
A little boy sat in the seat next to her. He wore a blue cap that read: WILBUR. The top of his bewildered eyes had disappeared above the brim of the cap. He gradually tried to become both one-dimensional and transparent.
The woman caught me staring at her. She finished her mouthful and stabbed her spoon into the can.
She had rainbow eyes, somewhere over which mutant birds flew.
"Is there something here you see which makes you stop and think? Some curiosity?" She indicated the spinach. "I will not dry up in time! I will no longer dust the floor with my breasts!" She grinned at me, a green and leafy grin. "The creams don't work. This once worked for a cartoon sailor. Thought I'd try."


I have since learned that minding one's business is the core of wisdom.