Deciding that another day of three meals in the hospital cafeteria is not the way to go, Mom and I decided to stop at Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast before heading into the hospital.
After picking up our orders and sitting down at a small, 2 person table, I removed my jacket and draped it around the chair. We begin to discuss the "recent" (perhaps five years ago now) renovations to the "venerable" (well, long standing at least) hometown Dunkin' Donut. We are politely interrupted by a middle aged mother of x.
My first interpretation of her approach (which turns out to have also been my Mom's) is that this lady knows us through her son or daughter and she's coming over to say, "Hi". But no, this is not the case; she has no idea who we are, nor we her.
She mentions noticing that my jacket says "Mar-mott" on it (she pronounced it that way, hard emphasis on both syllables, with the mot being more like the mott in Mott's Canyon instead of the "mut" that I usually hear out of people). She goes on to relate semi-intelligibly some story about her family being on vacation somewhere, and either seeing a marmot, or someone having a similar jacket, or something involving "marmot". Whatever the source of the identification, it seems that "mar-mott" was a call they made to each other all weekend, and they got quite a kick out of its continued use. Her entertainment over this was barely contained even as she spoke about it.
This was something she needed to share strongly enough with me that she had specifically come over, after having noticed my jacket while I stood in line previously. She told us she just thought it would brighten our day if she passed that along, or something along those lines. I'm not so sure it brightened my day, but it at least took my attention off of hospital thoughts for a moment.
Gotta love the random person consciously choosing to momentarily intersect their life with yours to share a miscellaneous anecdote. I'm sure I've done something similar, but I found this situation particularly incongruent.
