Thank You, Giant Easter Bonnet Lady In Ralphs Market

*This pales in comparison to what I saw.

I wanted to give a shout-out to the woman wearing the largest Easter bonnet I have ever seen outside of an Easter parade. As a matter of fact, it was an Easter parade float—on her head.

I was with Sally (the hike Nazi), and we weren’t in a church where you might expect to see a giant bonnet or two.

Nope, we were shopping. Or better said, she had taken pity on me, her bent-over, cut-open friend, and had offered to drive me to the market for macaroni and cheese. You know the shitty kind they have at the service deli that doesn’t contain one single natural ingredient. I’m sure the noodles are plastic and the orange dye is toxic but I was craving it—what can I say?

The fact that this woman was wearing a ginormous bonnet loaded up with colored eggs, fuzzy yellow chicks and assorted foliage inside of  Ralph’s supermarket didn’t seem to faze her in the least.

She was bipping cheerfully across the front end of the market seemingly unaware of the fact the everyone was staring at the float on her head. You couldn’t help it. First of all, this spectacle happened last Tuesday, a full five days ahead of the Sunday holiday.

Even in my debilitated state I couldn’t help but smile. And point and stare. I’m a sucker for a funny hat.

“Sally!” I yelled feebly not wanting to use my diaphragm muscles for volume lest I pass out from pain right there in the self check-out line. “Get a load of that!” I grabbed her shoulders and pointed her entire body in the direction of the float wearing lady because that’s what good friends do—we point shit out to our besties so they don’t miss it.

Especially funny shit.

She looked up distractedly, (do you blame her? She was at the market—with an invalid—on her day off), broke a smile, nodded her approval, and went back to slamming the groceries against the glass to get them to scan. Clearly, my Good Samaritan friend had lost her patience with life, me, questionable mac-n-cheese, supermarket scanners, grapes with no code, and women who wear costumes to shop.

I, on the other hand, was totally enthralled with this woman. I was dying to take a picture with her but my phone was in my back pocket and that day I was completely incapable of the contortions that would require me to perform.

I had been marinating in post-surgical moroseness (or morosity as I like to call it), and THE PURE JOY emanating from this happy-go-lucky, completely un-selfconscious, float wearing woman was like a beam of sunlight parting the black clouds that had gathered around my head. I couldn’t help but stare. And laugh.

But not AT her—WITH her.

She was delightful.
I wanted to BE her.
I wanted to crawl up inside of her bonnet which was the size of an extra-large pizza box—suck my thumb—and see the world from that vantage point.

God! It must be great to be her!

So thank you, giant Easter bonnet wearing lady. Just the memory of you has made me smile this entire week and I can’t ask more from another human being than to make me that happy.

Can you?

Carry on,
xox