Not so Charitable Thoughts

I had started today in a bleak mood as my favorite car, a vintage Mark 2 Jaguar decided it was not going to start, unacceptable and damned inconvenient. I would have taken the BMW but for some strange reason my sister Liselle had commandeered it instead of using her driver and the town car. I was not in the mood to be chauffeured by some halfwit so I used the staff car, a Honda which made me feel like some dreary housewife drowning in her life of boredom. However this was actually a blessing in disguise as I suddenly found myself in a situation where anonymity was required.

Sometimes you can go about your daily life, think about someone and there they suddenly are, put forth before you like a gift from the heavens—today was such a day for me. I was driving between meetings when who should turn in front of me but minxie in her mother’s antiquated Mercedes, this girl seemed determined to hang onto her past with an obstinacy that was alarming. Not one to allow an opportunity to slip by I pulled my car behind her pleased with the knowledge that as long as I kept a reasonable distance she would have no idea who I was in a strange car. She ambled, and it was horrible for she drives like her head is in the clouds, forcing me to dodder behind, tracking her erratic path. I followed her drifting for several blocks until she finally parked in front of one of those pointless creations of guilt—the charity shop. The salve of religions and community, the charity shop eases our guilt from ignoring those lesser beings of imperfect creation while bestowing the generosity of our castoffs upon them.

Minxie was doing just that today, she had several bags full of what looked like clothes, probably her mothers and wandered in looking the worse for wear. I did not leave my car as it was not a place I cared to be associated with for I did my charitable works by attending dreadful dinners and fashion shows held by the glitterati and it would never serve for these people to confuse me with a person who actually cares. I waited for half an hour and was answering an urgent call from a board meeting that could not start without my presence when minxie re-emerged carrying the same bags. It looked as if she could not part with her belongings so easily and I watched her sit in her car waiting for the emotional storm I was certain would follow. An unnatural urge to comfort her flitted across my soul but was easily banished by the memory of apeboy and the mountain. This girl had made her existence a gloom by her own doing and I was no shoulder to cry on. She drove off in her wayward fashion and I continued on to a meeting hating her for the emotions she brought forth in me, I am a Dubois and we are not affected by the miseries of others.

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