The Purse Snatcher

I woke up this morning to the sound of a lawnmower and a weed trimmer outside my window. It's bloody December 21st. I don't care how long the grass is, after the beginning of December, small power tools and trimming stuff should be safely tucked in for a long winter's nap. I mean, come on! Of course, the weather is warm here...as opposed to Denver where they got 20 inches of snow. One girl that I met the other day aptly put it this way, "Man, the weather is like living in someone's arm pit. By the time you step out the door, you're already dripping with sweat and because of all the refineries, it smells funny." I thought it was funny anyway...

So, after a week and a half of living in the Beaumont area and VERY little social stimulation (except at church on Sunday where they asked me to lead the music and I was subjected to the boy-who-talks-like-a-girl trying to teach me from the congregation how to move my arm correctly....LISTEN STUPID BOY! NO ONE'S EVEN LOOKING AT ME. WHO CARES HOW MY ARM IS MOVING?? I'M JUST HERE TO BE PRETTY!), the evening finally arrived for the church single adult Christmas party (the only Christmas party I have been to in like seven years).

When you think of Christmas party, you think of people chatting gaily while also wearing tinsel in their hair. This party was a little different. It was a combined "service project" and party. What that meant was that they also invited several Mormon senior citizens from the area. My job was to seat one of them and fix her a plate. Easy, right?

After I had attended to my "special" guest, I sat down to consume my own plateful of food when I noticed that one of the senior citizens appeared to be totting my purse around. I took a closer look and indeed, IT WAS MY PURSE. I convinced myself that she had made a mistake and would return the purse to it's original position. Wrong. She carried the purse around for the rest of the evening, pausing several times to rifle through it, looking for stuff that obviously wasn't there. I figured that when she looked at the contents and couldn't find her stuff, she would go to find her real purse. Wrong again. She held the purse on her lap throughout the entire Christmas-y program and at the end, tried to walk out the door with it. It took me nearly 10 minutes of fancy talking to assure her that it was indeed, NOT HER PURSE. In the end, I had to call my own cell phone in the purse pocket so she would realize that I wasn't trying to rob her. I only did this so that I wouldn't have to create a scene including me shouting something that included, "GIVE ME THE DAMN PURSE, OLD LADY!!"

And in conclusion, I would just like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...yes, even to the old lady who tried to take my money, phone, and credit cards.