Suspicious character

There are people who give one cause for alarm. There is the person that passes you, and makes you grasp the handbag a little closer, or veer to avoid even passing near their personal body space. Then there are the people that you don't even notice that are there. They fade so inconsequentially into the background that there presence causes nary a ripple in the ether.

I think that I am neither of these types of people. I can be loud and annoying enough to always assert my presence, but at the same time, appear harmless enough to not cause concern. I possess neither great beauty nor malformation to draw any particular attention to myself.

So it was with some surprise that when I was lining up in a national department chain store over the weekend at the checkout, I was taken aback by the actions of the woman in front of me. As she was completing her purchases, she hugged the keypad to her, shrouding it with her body, to prevent anyone from sneaking a look at her PIN as she entered it.

Her paranoia was cute - I felt powerful and a little scary for a very brief second!