Raves and Rants

"Ma'm Can I have your ID please", the freckled teenager behind the checkout desk at the drugstore asked me. Since when do I look eighteen? fleetingly flattered, yet perplexed, that he called me Ma'm. Before asking for ID. Somehow, this kid didn't seem like the cynical  ladies at the Macy's beauty and perfumes counter at the mall, cornering me to buy that expensive nighttime cream. "Do you need any help?", Liz asked, looking at me as she would a frumpy alien. All I wanted was to smell the roses in that perfume that promised me "Romance" and "Diamonds". "I'm not sure.." I blurted, Liz looked at me with "Gone Girl" eyes, before putting me in front of a magnifying mirror that highlighted that and all the other things that were alarmingly wrong with my face. She looked mortified and bewildered at my state of being and whispered to me surreptitiously, not ostensibly wanting to embarrass me, "You Need to take

I'm not a small talker, I'm a big talker. Ask the homeless people I ignore asking me to buy them lunch, or was it train fare, or was it money to buy illegal substances? When I was new to NYC, I mistook the phrase on the small cardboard placard  next to the young lady sitting on the platform "Spare Change",  to imply she was giving away free change, and I looked at the dilapidated state of this relatively young lady with hair strewn all over her face and head bent, and asked my self why was she giving out free change? She could certainly use the change, I mean next to parking meters she would do much better trying to part with that change; and more importantly why aren't people rushing to get this so called "Spare Change". Then, I saw it, people dropping change in her coffee cup, as they went there merry ways. Yes, This is the kind of clueless I am. Subways are no talk zone, let alone small talk, unless you're the hobo in the corner mumbling to his