The Old Woman Shakes Her Cane.

I was in Pittsburgh this week, and while I was driving around the downtown area, I saw something I thought I would only see in a movie.

I was rolling through an intersection. I had to slow down, as there was an old woman in the crosswalk in front of me. She shuffled along, hunched over, in a white shawl. She was not graceful, but my coworker and I (he's in his 50s) both agreed that if years on this earth equated to wisdom, she must have carried frankincense to some baby's birth long ago. Adult republicans seeing her would have lamented that the Boy Scouts of America were clearly snoozing on the job, which never would have happened on THEIR watch in the 1950s. She slowly crossed the great expanse that was the crosswalk. As she left my lane and moved into the oncoming lane, a car pulled up and stopped for her.

Evidently, the driver pulled up too fast, too close, or both. She stopped, mid-shuf, and raised her eyes to the driver. She then raised her cane, precariously trusting her centuries-old legs to maintain their balance for the duration of her admonition. She shook her cane with grandmotherly fury at the driver.

We didn't have time to see how long she berated the driver, as we rolled passed, happy to have avoided personally experiencing her wrath. My coworker and I could only laugh. It was picturesque. It was surreal. It was as if we were watching a movie. It only could have been MORE classic, if she had hit the car with her cane.