Conversations with Elizabeth

I met a lovely young lady called Elizabeth at the Canning Bridge IGA. I think she was Chinese, although she was also just as Australian as me. As always, I try to talk to strangers as much as I can because, aside from it helping me with my lisp or occasional stutter, not enough people talk to each other anymore.

Elizabeth was helping herself to some chicken wings from the hot food bar. Or at least trying to, because she kept dropping them at first.

I told her I never understood why people ate wings when they hardly had any meat on them, just like ribs. She showed me a few pieces that actually had meat and said she knew exactly which ones she wanted. I think it was chicken, anyway.

Elizabeth said she usually cooked stir-fries at home but had seen the wings and thought she’d grab a few, which she normally didn’t do.

I told her that’s why she was so skinny.

She laughed and said that’s why she was cold all the time.

“Carbohydrates!!” I replied.

Elizabeth then started walking away before suddenly turning around.

“Where’s the lids? I need a lid!”

After a bit of searching, I finally found one for her round container and we both laughed.

“Wait! You need to fill it up!” I said.

“What?”

“The container! They charge by the container.”

“I only want four wings. How much is it?”

I looked back and pointed to a sign that said $13-something.

She shook her head in disgust and went to put them back.

“No! Fill it up!! I’ll pay for it.”

“NO!”

By golly, this lovely young lady was as stubborn as a mullet and we were only dealing with chickens!!

Elizabeth ended up putting them back, flatly refusing to let me pay for them. I told her I was rich because I hadn’t paid my bills yet, so I had money to buy them for her.

She told me she was on the pension and always had to be careful with her money.

“Well, that’s exactly why I’m offering to buy them for you.”

Nope. Just as stubborn as my mother.

Then Elizabeth started going on about how old she was. No matter how many times I told her she was young, or that she might be like me and actually younger than her age, she wasn’t having a bar of that concept. Eighty years old and firmly resolute.

To try and make her feel better, like I do with a lot of people who are slightly older than myself, I told her I was 80.

She looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and complete aghast.

Then she slapped her hand on my wrist and said, “No you’re not.”

“I am!” I insisted. “Well… I mean 1981.”

She burst out laughing. Her daughter was born in 1980.

She’d just come back from looking after three of her grandkids while her daughter was at work, I think she said. Elizabeth had five grandchildren altogether and was on her way home.

By the time I finally got to the checkout, Elizabeth was still there. It looked like she was using vouchers to bring her $5.90 purchase down to something like $1.65.

I tried to sneak my card in and at least pay for that.

Then I was telling the checkout girl how stubborn Elizabeth was; how she thought she was old when she wasn’t and how she kept refusing to let me buy her chicken wings.

Elizabeth was laughing and saying, “Don’t tell the whole world.”

I looked at the checkout girl, then back at Elizabeth, and said, “She’s not the whole world. She’s a beautiful young lady.”

The conversation continued for a little while longer in the car park after Elizabeth opened the door to her car, but we were both still laughing and smiling while we chatted some more.

I bet that conversation made Elizabeth’s night, just like it made mine.

And I probably will never see that beautiful young Elizabeth again.

But perhaps that’s the beauty of talking to strangers. For ten or fifteen minutes, two people who had never met before made each other’s day a little bit brighter before heading off in different directions.

I reckon we need a lot more of that.