Friday, January 4, 2008

Betty

I don’t know a lot about Betty, what I do know is she is a petite spunky girl, her hair is a little thin and needs a touch up color wise but her choice of sunset red suits her personality. She has a sweet southern voice and I expect on each Sunday you would find her dressed in a choir robe signing her heart out at the 11AM service.

When I see her she’ll often she walk alongside me, but occasionally I’ll stop and let Betty have her way with me giving her my full attention. She’s cute as can be; she’s a lot older than I am, I’d guess just a shade over 70 and she stands out as the type of women that comes from money, who in her retirement years wouldn’t need to work but Betty does work, as a Wal-Mart Greeter.

I’m not sure what the job description of a Wal-Mart Greeter is, but I’m fairly certain it doesn’t include being able to tell a joke. Along with being a Wal-Mart Greeter Betty is also standup comedian; if all the world’s a stage then Wal-Mart is her Comedy Store.

Betty is full of them, one liners, crazy knock knocks and four part jokes and most of them lame but always tame.

Even so, I fear the management might frown on her joke telling or perhaps some customer might be offended with the subtle harassment. I’m not sure where she gets her material but I’ll bet she doesn’t belong to Jay Leno’s writer’s guild.

The other day my son and I hit the Wal-Mart and there was Betty in her usual spot just inside the Garden Center. We were in a hurry so I suggested to my son, that if Betty approached we should be polite but keep moving.

As we finished up our shopping, Betty started to walk towards us, and I commented to my son that we should get going, but much to my surprise my son insisted that we hear her out.

A brisk wind was whistling through the door leading to the parking lot and my freedom, you know the type sounds like the artic night on the North Pole and so Betty suggested “why don’t you boys step out of the cold and listen to my joke” and so she continued… “Did you hear about the man…?”

I glanced at my son who’s now just a bit taller than I am, expecting to see him rolling his eyes or some other obvious note of boredom but to my astonishment he was completely in tune with the senior comedian.

When she concluded with the punch line he gave a genuine laugh and I did my best pretend laugh as if the joke had me in stitches.

She looked at my son, and with a true twinkle in her eye said “well what do you think of my joke?” My son looked at her and put Betty straight “that was pretty bad but… you made me laugh”.

“I like honesty” she said.

Then to my shock and amazement my son proceeded to tell her his joke about a drunken bicyclist, the PG version I should add.

As we walked in the cold winter air heading towards our car I could hear Betty still just inside the garden center say to another Wal-Mart customer: “Did you hear the one about the bicyclist?” “Well let me tell you, there was this bicyclist and he was drunk…”

1 comment:

Rea Road Neighborhood Coalition said...

I haven't seen Betty in sometime now, I guess that's the way life is.