Verizon Lady

Sometimes you have to look for a bit of crazy to bring into your life, and sometimes it lands in your lap.

There are lots of familiar faces that come through Starbucks in the morning, people who are regulars like me, but who don't typically stay for any length of time. Today, one of them approached me, pointing at my netbook.

"Is that yours?" she asks.

A number of sarcastic comments pop to mind, but they're all too obvious, and besides, that would be rude. So instead, I simply reply in the affirmative.

"Is it Verizon?"

Now there's a question I hadn't expected. Does Verizon make netbooks? I say that no, it's an Asus Eee PC, and in no way affiliated with Verizon.

"Well!" she says, and launches into a sales pitch. Apparently you can get a free netbook with a Verizon Blackberry service plan and it's a great computer and all you have to do is sign a two year commitment but then again everyone has you sign a two year commitment these days and if you have to you can get out of it, but look! You get a computer just like that one you have there, only it's even smaller and it does everything you need a computer for these days like Internet Explorer and email and....

I stared politely at her until she wound down. I had ample opportunity to study her as I did so. She was somewhere in her late forties, perhaps already tipped over into the precipice of the early fifties. She wore a white zip-up hoodie, glasses with heavy black frames brought to a tip at the ends, hair that had been dyed blonde at some point in the prehistoric past, but which now had deep brown roots. She wore black sweatpants as well, but on her feet, fancy strappy sandals with little rhinestone buckles.

So what's her backstory? I figure that it's not only college students who do the walk of shame, but adults plan for it better. Why go home in the dress you wore to the 40+ mixer last night when you can bring along comfy sweatpants? But dammit, she always forgets the shoes. But that's okay, no one will notice if she just stops into Starbucks for a few minutes.

Or maybe she works from home, for Verizon of course, but she has to go out and get her morning coffee. And you know, she'd really prefer to put on comfortable shoes, but she saw these last weekend and just had to get them, and her husband said she'd never wear them, and she said that just showed what he knew, except she really didn't know where she would wear them, but now she had to wear them all over the place just so he would shut up about how she always wasted money on shoes.

She concluded her pitch by saying that she was looking for ten people who were on Verizon to send a text message to a certain number and then she'd save $60 on her bill. I have Verizon, but I kept quiet. I had no interest in participating.

"Enjoy your laptop!" she said as she left, and as a parting shot, "Sorry you had to pay for it!"