Naughty Versus Nice

Any one who has known me any length of time knows that I don’t need much incentive to be naughty.  Misbehavin’ is my natural state, but motherhood and age have really mellowed me.  I think I probably have a large number of new acquaintances fooled into thinking I am an upstanding citizen.  It is a façade I have adopted most of the time.

Today, I stopped by Chapel Hill Needlepoint to ask one of my new favorite people Nancy, the owner, how to proceed with a project I was almost finished with.  When she looked at the Santa coat ornament in question she said that I was actually done which was music to my ears.  Since I had allotted forty minutes in my day to work at the community needlepoint table I just started work on my next ornament.

I love stitching at Nancy’s big round table with the store’s door open to enjoy the perfect May day.  There never fails to be any number of interesting women who drop by to stitch and visit.  Nancy has a great way of keeping the business running and being part of the conversation at the same time, which is quite amazing based on the large numbers of people who are in and out of her store all day.

Beside customers there are the army of different delivery people who you would expect at a store, the Post person, the UPS and Fed Ex men are normal.  But then there is the CSA delivery farmer.  If you don’t know, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and Nancy’s store is a drop off/pick up point for people who subscribe to one farmer.  So CSA customers stop by her store to get their eggs, veggies and meat.

One of my favorite regulars, Ann was at the community table working on a Christmas stocking today.   Ann is a few years older than me and does not know me well, but that does not stop us from sharing stories.  While we were stitching a young guy in his twenties pulled up to the front of the store in his F-250 diesel truck.  He gets out and leaves the loud engine running as he comes into the store.  Suffice it to say he is not the normal profile of Nancy’s customers, but Nancy gets up she and the young man go back to the storeroom where the produce is.

Ann and I look at each other, both annoyed by the loud engine and diesel smell disturbing the needlepoint nirvana we thought we deserved.  It took more than a minute for Nancy to sort out which box belonged to this CSA customer.  I looked at Ann and asked if she thought turning off a truck was hard to do.  Her comment was perfectly Chapel Hillian in that it was also bad for the environment.  My naughtiness immediately emerged when I said that I could teach him to never leave a truck running again if I went out and jumped in the truck and drove away with it.  Ann loved the idea, but then we both agreed that the lesson was not worth my being charged with grand theft auto.

After the young man leaves Ann and I tell Nancy of the plan we held back on.  Nancy is obviously much nicer than me because she said he was a cute guy and it probably hard to start the truck after turning it off since it was diesel.  I obviously do not have the personality to have a store; I think you have to be a lot more nice than naughty.