Here's Dot!

Recently I was shopping in Kohl's with my older daughter and a lady walked up to me and told me I look like her friend Dot. But I don't have a cane & Dot uses a cane so she knew it wasn't her, but I have a twin! I have a friendly face. And she walked away. Good to know....

And that is how my alternate persona “Dot” was born.  Dot has many adventures, usually with my daughter.  Odd things seem to happen to us when we go out together. Shortly after the above episode we went to a concert my niece was in.  As we stood talking to my brother in the lobby after the concert the son of my high school band director rushed over, and smiling, introduced himself saying, “Do you remember me?  I’m Dave.” Giving me no time to answer, he shook my hand and turned to my brother, extending his hand.  My brother took the offered hand and said, “I’m Dave,” (because he is).  With that, the man walked away as quickly as he had approached and disappeared into the crowd.  It was a curious encounter which my daughter and I decided was a Dot thing.

A few weeks later we were again out shopping on a Saturday morning and decided to stop into the pizzeria next to Home Goods and order subs to bring home for lunch.  We walked in and ordered and took a seat in a booth near the register.  We watched as they worked and it appeared they were getting ready for an offsite catering job as well as making food for customers who came in.  After about 15 minutes all the employees began loading their catering van, carrying trays of food out the front door, passing us each time.  It seemed as if they forgot about our subs.  We watched with amusement for a few minutes and then I caught the owner’s eye as he hurried back inside for more of the food to load.  Realizing why we were still there, he asked one of the employees to give us our sandwiches and ring us up. We laughed once we were in the car chalking the experience up to another Dot adventure.

Just this past weekend I ventured out to our local Shop Rite along with most of the town it seems to replace the leftover holiday food with so called normal food since it was the end of the holiday break and life would be returning to normal on Monday. As I traversed the very crowded aisles and tried to look for the items I wanted I first did laps around the produce department because it seemed as if there was an odd traffic pattern of shoppers and carts happening and I kept missing my turn at the items I wanted so had to keep looping around. It was dizzying going in circles and trying to stop in front of the lettuce, peppers, and bananas. Once out of the traffic flow there I was able to make my way through the store.  Until I got to the aisle with coffee on one side and canned fruit on the other with several of those cardboard displays of featured items in the aisle.  As I inched my way along trying to find canned peaches while avoiding the other shoppers and go around the displays the wheel of my cart caught the corner of one and down it went, canisters of coffee skittering across the floor.  A very kind woman helped me right the display and pick up the canisters, several of which were lodged under my cart, and place them on the cardboard tower.  We then each continued our perusal of the goods and another shopper, new to our aisle, said as she walked by, “they have too many of these displays in the way,” I agreed and caught the eye of my helper and we both chuckled.  Another Dot adventure for the record!

Now whenever I have an offbeat encounter while I’m out, whether alone or with my daughter it becomes another chapter in the “Adventures of Dot”, a fictitious book.  Hmmm, maybe I should think about taking that from fictitious to real……