Jane Smith

I was in the country store in Vermont that I had bought to escape my dearly-beloved but fabulously expensive Boston. The kid was a driver for the Pepsi supplier, so I was going to be seeing him over and over, for a long time.

He was nineteen, hoping to live to twenty-one, but he called me “ma’am” and his longevity became questionable. I told him I would give him a big tip to never call me ma’am again and he said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought at your age, you would want….”

Beats me how that sentence ended up. I stopped listening immediately. I was only 45, in top condition. Even at the end of a hard day when my heart and liver had sunk into my sneakers, I only looked 32, maybe 30 with a hangover. How could I be a “ma’am,” or “at your age?” What is this crap?!?

I should mention, the kid was cute. My female staff got all squishy whenever his Pepsi truck rolled up. He had good hair. Thick, curly, long over his ears and neck. Yum. The only trouble was, he was surly. But because I was 45 and not 25, it occurred to me that he might be uptight, rather than just surly. After all, it was a high estrogen stop, our store. All the staff were female, sometimes excessively so.

So I called to the kid and asked him to come over because I had something to ask him. He looked like someone had just shoved a double-barreled shotgun up his rectum but dutifully he came; after all, I was the owner of the store.

I said to him, “Can I have your hair?”

Never mind the staff going into fits at my nerve or at the kid’s brilliant blush: he dissolved on the spot. He was mine. He tried not to but he could not help but grin; most likely he always wondered if he had good hair. Now he knew for sure. He would have laughed if he had been older but as he wasn’t, he kind of snorted and shuffled. I told him he had beautiful hair.

It’s more certain than gravity that the other bitches in the store would have died to have the attention that he now gave to me. Too bad for you, I thought nastily as I flirted with the youngster. He left, still grinning, and never called me “ma’am” again. He was never surly either; we seemed to be his favorite stop, and…he always asked for me. Hah!

Dig this: maturity has its benefits. At 25, I would have shuffled and mumbled and whispered to some other broad, “Oh is he looking at me?” but would never have had the nerve to talk to him. I would have believed his surly act. At 45, I knew better.

Did better, too, Hah, again!

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