"Hey, Lady!"

I just thought this was funny, and I had to memorialize it someplace.

This is as good a place as any.

I was pulling out of a parking lot today, and stopped at the end to look both ways before I made a right turn toward home. Coming at me from my right was a huge dump truck, and it was maneuvering around a family walking five-abreast on the road. Thus, the truck was in the wrong lane. And so, I waited, and kept my eye on that truck as it careened toward me in the wrong lane.

I suppose it must have looked, to a woman riding a bicycle coming from the left, as though I was going to pull out -- which would've been really stupid since there was a truck in my lane, going the wrong way. Bicycle-riding-woman was coming from my left, right up alongside my car, and she and her four companions were apparently not worried about the large Mack truck heading their way in the wrong lane, but were instead worried about me because I hadn't (yet) looked to my left to see if anyone was coming.

I, of course, learned from my mother, Mook, many years ago "head on a swivel" when pulling out of anywhere. What Mook meant by that was to turn my head back-and-forth several times before moving forward in an automobile. In England they say, "Look Left!" (because they drive on the "wrong" side of the road). And, being one to always be extra-super-duper careful, I was simply sitting and waiting for the truck to go by and then I was going to start my head-on-a-swivel, which eventually would've meant turning my head to the left, then back to the right, then left again, right, left, right until I was satisfied that it was safe to proceed.

"Hey, LADY!" Bicycle-riding-woman hollered as she passed close by the front of my car, four companions close at her heels on their own bikes. I hadn't looked left, so I hadn't seen them (yet) but I think she thought I was just an absent-minded old lady. Those thoughts went through my brain rapid-fire, and instead of glaring at her, I just smiled. As she rode past, she said, "I just wanted to make sure you saw us!" and then all five of them waved. I pulled out behind them, real, real slow, and stayed way back until they turned up the bike path 100 yards away. As they turned, and I drove past them, they all waved again.

It was the first time anybody ever yelled, "Hey, Lady!" directed at me.

"OMG," I thought, "I have become 'lady.' That word. It's connotation, "Old hag." "Lady!" the very sound of it like something that smells bad.

"Hey! Lady!" Jerry Lewis.

Stephen King's "Hitchhiker" ("Thanks for the ride, Lady.")

"Jeez, Lady, watch where you're goin'!"

"Ugh! LAAAADY!!!" as some gray-haired woman cuts you off in traffic.

"Hey, Lady! Wake up!"

"Hey! Lady! Pay attention!"

But it was none of those things. It was Smart Lady, waiting for the truck to pass before moving into traffic.