Morning Conversations

Me, after my morning massage

Thursday morning. Massage hour. Uma Mary chimes her way into my bedroom at five minutes to seven in the morning. “Good maaarning Tai!”

Mostly she is full of news about what is happening in her life. Today she fires me with a dozen questions. So as she massages my back and my limbs I have to answer such stuff as, am I going to Charmayne’s party on Saturday evening. (Yes).

Uma Mary: Tai, do you dye your hair?
Me: If I did the white wouldn’t show now, would it.
U.M.: giggle giggle giggle
Me: I don’t suppose you need to dye your hair?
U.M.: Not really. There are a couple of strands of grey but they’re well hidden.

UM looks like she could be in her late thirties or at the most, early forties, though she has a grown up daughter whom she got married off about a year ago.)

U.M.: And if the white did start to show, I wouldn’t want to dye my hair.
Me: Why not?
U.M.: I’d feel ashamed to.
Me: Why!
U.M.: giggles. There is no explanation. My mother-in-law dyes her hair. Jet black. She hates to be called “old”. And my husband always teases her and calls her “Buddi.”
Me: And then?
U.M.: Oh she calls him “Budda” back. It makes her furious.

+++

Well now, massage and breakfast over, I’m waiting for some dimwit who made an appointment with me for this morning at 9 and has failed to show up and not even bothered to call and inform me that he wont be coming. Am not being rude in calling him a dimwit. People who don’t show respect for other people’s time, seem to me to lack intelligence and sensitivity.

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