Angelnina’s Cottage

An elderly couple was sitting in front of the shop on a bench. The woman asked me who he was, and I told her he is a famous chef.   Her husband said, “He looks too young to be a chef, looks more like a race car driver”

I always thought star struck groupies were beneath me.   I was one of the people who asked why people scream and get excited over another human being.

I was still staring, when I heard  a voice asking,

“Where’s your camera?” “Anita, where’s your camera?”

At this point I realized it wasn’t a voice in my head, it was my girlfriend E’s voice and she was shaking my arm trying to jar be out of my stupor.   E was telling me to run to the car and get the camera!   As a last ditch effort she grabbed my mocha and yelled,

“Run, Anita, Run!”

Immediately I started to run, but soon I realized I was running alongside the crew and the chef.   My short little legs could only move so fast and I couldn’t make headway.   I was also in a long dress, so I was running like a penguin due to the lack of leg room to make long strides.   So there I was running like a penguin with my drastically too dark eyebrows, trying to get ahead of them to reach my damn camera before they left the park.   The crew was staring at me and a policeman on a bike was trying to peddle slow enough to keep up with me.   “What is this crazy middle aged spiked hair lady with the too black eyebrows doing?”,  he seemed to be asking himself.

Finally, the crew stopped right in front of my parked van, and I could hear the chef asking the woman if she lived on the other side (pointing to the island).   It was then I realized they were in the middle of filming an episode.   I slid open my mini-van door and fumbled for my camera, lifted it from the case,  and then immediately started snapping photos. They all looked at me–I’m sure out of concern and for the protection of the poor chef and his guest.   It was as though I lost all sense of humility and kept snapping away, I followed them all the way out of the park, snap snap snap!   And up the hill and beyond the coffee shop.   Snap snap snap!

I entered the paparazzi zone.

I finally returned to the coffee shop , it was then I noticed the pain.  I hadn’t ran very far, but I had been so tense with excitement that I pulled muscles in my back and neck.   I hobbled into the coffee shop and shared the photos with E who was very proud of herself for shaking me into consciousness and helping me score the photos.   As we strolled back to the van with our mochas in hand we had big grins on our faces–we had spotted a celebrity in our very own little town.

“They can never call our town “Dead-monds” again.   Oh no, we live in an exciting little town.”

“Yeah, and we have photos to prove it.”

“Right, we aren’t all old and boring people here.”

We climbed into my white mini- van and pulled out our pink and purple wool yarns to begin knitting, I took some Advil for my muscle pain, and we watched the ferry pull away with the handsome chef –who “looks more like a race car driver”.

Middle age happens.