vickie and her pyrex plate.

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vickie vick is a lady on my meals on wheels route who just might probably be one of the most delightfully manipulative people i have ever met. with a few compliments and subtle hints, she will have you taking out her garbage, fetching her mail, and rubbing her feet. actually no, i haven't rubbed her feet...yet.

yesterday when i visited vickie (but also myrna? isn't that confusing?), she began to tell me all about her son jeffrey and showed me a few pictures. and then she told me how she wanted to meet my jeffrey (and even said "well hot damn!" when i told her he truly was tall, dark, and handsome). and then she told me how she liked my dress and how i was just the sweetest and also could you set up that garden set over there? 

oh, vickie. the things you do to me. pretty soon i had promised i would be back at eight, with my jeffrey in tow, and do you really like my dress? oh staaaaahp.

that's vickie and that's her easy glider bench that we (read : jeff) set up. and also that's her muumuu, cause like...duh.

while we were there, vickie told me a handful of stories about her life and her family and her bizarre history with health. obviously, these aren't my stories to share but she did tell me something that stuck with me. 

the reader's digest version of the story (da da da daaaa!) : 

after she had gotten out of a strange and sticky marriage, she packed her bags and hopped on a bus to anywhere. she wound up in st. louis, missiouri with five dollars to her name. after buying a few essentials at the grocery store, she went into the secondhand shop to get a plate and fork to eat with. the cheapest plate she could find was actually a lid to a pyrex pie dish so she bought it and soldiered on! she went on to say that quite obviously, her life has changed and she's no longer in that same dark place where she was at that st. louis bus stop but she won't ever, ever forget it. it was a defining moment, y'know? and how do we know what real joy is if we have never had some major trials? 

vickie said that, to this day, a few decades later, she still eats one meal a day off that pyrex lid because she likes to remember where she came from and how far she has made it.

da da da daaaaa!

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dude! vickie is the coolest!