When I see my breath on a cold morning for the first time, and the air temperature startles me, I can’t help but think whether or not this is the only type of weather that will be prevalent for the next nine months. During this season, the afternoons are pleasant, but the mornings are brutal. I dread the thought when every morning I must climb out of my bed where my body heat has been so nicely enclosed since the previous evening. This year, however, summer was not going to give up without a fight. It was the end of September, but it was about eighty degrees and extremely humid. I had to go to work, but I incorporated the weather into my wardrobe by wearing a tank top underneath my smock. I could tell, however, the customers were not going to embrace this sporadic occurrence like I was; maybe due to the fact that humidity makes people cranky… It was now about seven o’clock at night, and the store was closing in about two hours. Yes, two hours, but there was something that happened in those two hours that made them manageable. A girl. She was young, tall, and skinny, much like me. On her head, she wore a white beret that got lost in her bleached white hair, but most importantly her body was covered in colorful tattoos. The first one that stood out to me was the Alice in Wonderland one. I took the tender from my current customer, sent her on her way, and got ready to scan the Alice-in-Wonderland-girl’s groceries. I had barely started when she took a quick look down and blurted out, “that’s my name too!”
“Really?” I asked in return. “I like your tattoos,” I couldn’t help but saying. “The Alice In Wonderland one is my favorite.” She said each one represented a member of her wacky family, and that all her tattoos meant something. For example, one of my other favorites being a pair of eighth notes with paint brushes as the stems, representing an artsy person much like myself and her. After she left, I realized that that day I had met a piece of myself. We had the same name, but she wore my personality on her sleeve. Whatever inspired her to get those tattoos provoked me to notice her. While part of me wants to see her again, I know that mysteries stay mysteries for a reason, and whatever is meant to happen, will happen.