Shirley Short Hair

I met a woman this morning who had a totally yiddish or Bronx accent, and she told me she was from "MA". She claimed she'd lived there and then over here, in Wenatchee, for the last 25 years. She invited me in and wanted me to come back for "tea" or "coffee" and yet she was acting so weird when I left, I wondered.

I was right to wonder! Not only that, I am realizing that my intuition is not perfect, but it is VERY good. You won't believe what happened.

Okay, so "Mystery Shirley" didn't live the entire first part of her life in MA. I could tell it was East Coast, but there is not a soul in MA that has that accent. No way, no how. Not unless they immigrated.

I wanted to borrow a phone for a minute this morning and it is the FIRST and ONLY time that I've knocked on any neighbor's door in this general area except for once for an emergency concerning my son. But not over there at all. So this woman has scripture stuff all over her house, and books by Max Lucado and Bible's set out all over the place and little framed sayings on her wall.

I only knocked on her door because the light was on and it was the only one with the light on. So I knocked and said I was just down the road and was still waiting for the phone to be set up, and could I use a phone for a minute? and she said yes, and please come in and she acted like she'd been waiting for me her whole life. She was totally done up and she had this chair facing a window that looked out over all of Wenatchee and had me sit there by her knitting. She told me her bird's name was "Amos" for being a bearer of burdens and I laughed and said I'd also had a parakeet by the name of Jonah. So this woman acted like she knew exactly who I was, and yet gave me this story about how she was from MA, when I knew she didn't get that accent from MA. No one from Wenatchee would even know, really, because she was a transplant 20-some years ago. She said her husband had worked for Boeing for 30 years. She said he died one year after moving to Wenatchee (probably not from natural causes either if he wasn't born here).

She decided to stay here anyway. So she's going on and on and I thought she was being nice but then she started asking about some "little girl" asking for $30 or something and wanted to know if I knew her. I said no, because I didn't.

I said almost nothing about myself, just that I needed to call someone and then I kept it under a minute, and I also said something about being tired and then she was doing this little memory test with me, asking me details and if I remembered different things. She told me my memory was going to be much worse when I was older, and I just said "mmmhmm". I really asked more about her life. Oh, she asked if I had any friends in the area and though I do, I just said, surrounding area. She said she was a homemaker and had 5 kids, and that was it. I could tell she was fairly intelligent, and she didn't seem like the type who would only do homemaking. But anyway, I left after 10 minutes of chatting, thanked her and she said, as she touched my arm, "Come back again please!" She had said this in the livingroom too. She kept telling me to please come back and visit her and she said, "Next time we'll have coffee or tea." Then I saw this odd look on her face but didn't think much of it. So I left! She asked me, at least 3 times, to please come back and visit often and she said, "I don't work so I try to help when I can." She even told me some woman was moving out of her apartment and that I should check into it.

The other thing which was kind of weird, she was wearing sort of a seafoam green or maybe "aqua" and then had this gigantic angel sitting by her window. Sort of in the middle of nowhere. She told me the item she was knitting in the basket was a "prayer shawl."

Next thing I know, I'm coming down the hill after finding some deer, and I was really looking for the wolf, but I got back to the house and what do I see down the street? A policecar in front of her house.

I instantly "knew". I have had a couple of people in this town, sometimes go out of their way to invite me to their house, not because I'm using a phone, but invite me over, and then turn around and try to complain that I was knocking on their door and annoying them. I didn't even know which apartment the officer was at, but I knew, immediately. I thought, "I will bet she called and tried to say I bothered her" just to cause trouble.

I was totally right. I mean, how would I even know there was about to be an apartment available unless she hadn't been encouraging me to move in NEXT DOOR?! One minute she's telling me to come back and have tea or coffee and saying to move in next door to her, and a couple of hours later she's calling police? So weird.

But not only was I right that she'd tried to cause problem when there wasn't an issue, I said to this guy outside, after asking "Why are the police here?" He said he didn't know and I said what I thought might be going on because "I just have a feeling" and I even told him, "She's probably telling him she's worried I was casing the joint." So he laughs and nods, and then the officer is pulling out and I waved him over and asked what was going on. He started to talk and then I said I wanted to know if it was some woman and he tells me yes! It was her! and, he said, he even said she thought I was casing the joint. His exact words. It was like he had just overheard exactly what I said to the other guy and the other guy heard both of us too.

So then I was told it was really more about someone else than me but I had been mentioned by "two ladies" and I told him I'd only ever met or knocked on one door one time, and met that one woman, and that was today. Then he kept saying something about did I know some girl who was "weird" and I said no, there were just a couple of preteen kids in the area and they seemed nice and I couldn't imagine the little girl was any kind of problem at all. I did tell the officer this woman had asked about some girl and was weird about it.

So as I was talking to this officer, the woman, "Shirley", comes out of her house with this purple jacket on and just glares and smirks at me. She KNEW! This woman did what she did intentionally and that look made it clear. What I mean by "did what she did" is just that she purposefully tried to cause trouble and drag my name through the mud and then was telling me to keep going BACK.

So what was going to happen if I didn't stop the office and ask? I was going to go back for "coffee" and to chat and she was going to invite me in again and bs and then call the police again?

Totally bizarre. But she's not the first to do this to me. I've had some really interesting encounters in this town. One by a similiar type of woman, whose husbands both worked in the military in high ranking positions for years and then the woman tells me "The Arabs tried to BUY my daughter and the U.S. told them, 'we don't do things that way'" and this woman kept going on and on and wanted me to visit and I later found out she'd complained about me after she acted like I was the catch. I guess one of her daughters served in the military in the Dubai and someone wanted to marry her and asked about an arrangement. She read all these eclectic magazines, from The Smithsonian to some high ranking military magazine, to National Geographic, art world stuff...and I asked her why she was subscribing to the military magazine and she said, "Oh I get it as a courtesy to my husband" (who died, like, 10 years ago).

Anyway, I cannot believe this woman Shirley has ever read a book by Max Lucado. SO bizarre. And why would she even have an Amazing Grace thing on her wall? She doesn't know anything about "grace"! To do that to someone! Come back for "coffee" or "tea". Right. I really thought, she sounded yiddish. I would have thought she was Jewish, just by her accent, before anything else. It wasn't just a New York style accent, it was more like yiddish or just different. I don't know how to describe it but honestly, maybe it's more of a Bronx or Brooklyn type of a thing? Definitely not MA. I think people don't realize how well-traveled I've been, at least in the states, and they underestimate me.

I can't imagine why anyone would want me to be in trouble unless it is affecting my son in a negative way, for me to be living where I'm living, but where would I move to? I mean, this woman just wanted to put some kind of a bad rap on me.

Partly, my hunch was intuitive because it was based on seeing the police car there when it's a quiet neighborhood, and then also knowing how some in this community have intentionally tried to create problems for me. But the rest of it, was even more accurate than I would think. I felt like I knew exactly what she was saying, and I even said it to someone else and then it was repeated.

How disappointing though. I try to be nice and some people are just mean. I guess my last post was for people like Shirley, aside from state workers.