I took the Hyundai in for a routine oil change and tire rotation. I have been taking my cars to the same mechanic’s shop for around a decade, now. It’s a nice local shop, been in business since 1968. Their prices can’t be beat, their service folks are really nice, and I’ve never felt ripped off because I’m a girl.


When I came in, there was a woman already at the counter. The service guy was writing up her work order and I heard she was getting the tires replaced on her Lexus. Meanwhile, another service guy was writing up my work order. I felt a little weird – disparaged, perhaps? – as I told the guy my car is a Hyundai Accent, while the woman next to me was sporting around town in a Lexus. I estimated her to be slightly older than myself. Just a smidge of peer pressure or something kind of rolled off, but I took one look at her and summarized I would never trade my life for hers. I like my life, and I like my car, and in my heart of hearts, I don’t truly have car envy or status envy. Just sometimes, you know, every now and then, you get reminded of how the other side might be seeing you. My service guy finished my work order and I went over to the waiting area to sit down. It’s your typical waiting area with a window, a television on a rickety stand in the corner, and two hand-me-down sofas sitting opposite each other. There’s room for two people to sit on either sofa. A college-age woman dressed in sweats and her hair pulled back was sitting on one end of a sofa, while a business-type looking woman sat on the other end of the same sofa. I took a seat on the opposite sofa.


Over walks Miss Lexus. Mind you, she garnered my attention when I was up at the counter, because you don’t see women like her every day. You kind of have to pause a moment and take it all in, and then go about your business. I’ll explain in a minute, because it just gets weirder from here.


Instead of taking the only remaining seat on the sofa next to me, Miss Lexus goes around the corner and drags over an office chair, saying to the guys behind the counter, “You don’t mind if I do some furniture rearranging, do you?”


Now, there could be a million reasons why she chose to do that. Maybe she wanted to see the television, and the only empty seat was facing away from it. Maybe she didn’t want to put her purse on the floor, and sitting in the chair by the end table allowed her to plop her purse on it, instead. But the first thing that ran through my mind was “She doesn’t want to sit near any of us.”


And now I can explain why I thought this. When I first saw her at the counter, I noticed right away that her makeup was absolutely flawless. Her skin was tanned, and she was toned and physically, she looked great for her age. She looked every bit the part like someone took care of her, and her only job in life was to keep herself looking good. Her makeup literally looked like she’d just walked off a movie set or a photo shoot. Who knows? Maybe she did. But the thing that really got my attention was her outfit. She was wearing this teeny, tiny, oh-so-short cheap looking black mini-skirt with ruffles. It looked like she’d rifled through her teenaged daughter’s closet. Despite how not there it was, it took center stage.


When she shunned the rest of us and opted to drag a chair over so she could sit alone, she kind of spiked my ire. That’s when I studied her a bit more carefully.


As soon as she sat down, she pulled out her blackberry and mentally spaced out. She really did not want to be there; that much was obvious. That’s when I started noticing the rest of her outfit, and how odd it was that her makeup was flawless, her brows plucked to perfection, her nails were professionally manicured, her skin was lightly tanned, but her toes were not painted and she was wearing open-toed platform wedge sandals with skinny straps wrapped around the ankles. Okay, even I know that is a cardinal sin in the style bible. If your toes are exposed, they must be painted. Then I noticed her shirt was a form clutching tie-dyed t-shirt and she’d pulled this yellowish mustard colored sweater jacket over it. Her hair, although done, was pulled back in this “just get it out of my way” manner.


She continued to be completely absorbed by her blackberry. Eventually, she got tired of poking at it, and started calling people. And she had the weirdest conversations. At one point, she was talking to someone who at first I thought might have been a therapist – but then she asked how the swallowing was going – like this person was in physical therapy – and….it was just weird, because she was asking these really blunt, insensitive questions, and then almost rolling on by the answer by saying, “You’ll get it. It’ll just take some time.” At the same time, even her voice sounded polished and as flawless as her makeup.


She talked to about four different people, all having very weird conversations with them, and ending all of them with “I love you.” On her last conversation, she mentioned how she was at the mechanic’s shop, getting new tires. She was like, “I’m at some mechanic shop, , down here at the corner of X and Y. I guess they had good prices,” and her tone alluded that she couldn’t believe she was there, and almost like she was there against her will, and more upon the insistence of another.


Maybe she was a Real Housewife in disguise because she’d fallen on hard times (but still in denial) and she couldn’t believe she had to take her Lexus to the corner mechanic and hob-knob with the locals, instead of taking it to the shiny Lexus dealership with their sanitized waiting room. Yet, she was half put-together. She lacked the style sense that even a fashion oaf like myself knows. On one hand, she did look like she would be more comfortable at a Lexus dealership, but then other parts of her didn’t match at all. I take pride in how I seem to be aging well, but even I would not be caught dead in public in a micro mini-skirt.

And a tie-dyed t-shirt? Do they even make those anymore?


Very, very strange.