Forty-nine years ago (This is the long ago part.), I was walking through Macy's department store in Roosevelt Field here on Long Island. I was going through the cosmetics section on my way toward the store's escalator.
In those days, the cosmetics section was always filled with the strong odors of a baziliion different perfumes, all of which I found repulsive so I was trying pretty hard to hold my breath for a while. Being all of thirty years old at the time, I could manage that.
There was another young man walking ahead of me in the same direction. He was maybe ten or fifteen paces ahead of me when one of the store clerks, a young woman who was carrying a spray bottle of something, intercepted him and used that bottle to catch this poor guy off guard and spritz him.
He flew into a genuine rage. Nothing physical happened but the sound of his voice taking that young woman to task could be heard all over the place. She kind of backed away and then this fellow strode off and away at what looked like an accelerated pace.
Guess what happened next.
That same young woman holding that same spray bottle turned in my direction and raised the bottle as if to give me a dose of that stuff. I saw that coming and in an attempted basso profundo, I said to her:
Don’t – you - dare!!
She got this strange look on her face, then she spun around and scrammed out of sight.
Fast forward to just yesterday.
I was walking though that same section of the same Macy’s while my wife was doing some shopping and along came a young woman with a small bottle of something with a nozzle on top and I thought “Oh-oh!”.
We live under different rules now though. That cosmetics section doesn’t have the same overwhelming collection of perfume odors it once had and it is now recognized that some people have allergy issues that can be quite dangerous.
I didn’t have to say anything.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.