Momnesia

Embarrasment. I has it.

Due to scheduling difficulties, I had to pick Emmie up from school and take her with me to the Augusta Harley Davidson dealership for a little photo session. We're waiting at the front desk with the lovely Miss Bebe, who looks and acts like a sweet woman in her mid-60s, but whom I've dubbed The Velvet Hammer. There is no screwing with Miss Bebe. She controls all situations and no one questions it.

Miss Bebe has plied Emmie with fresh popcorn and questions, given her a (highly age-inappropriate) Harley Davidson calendar, and chatted comfortably with me. Just then, the side of Miss Bebe that I secretly covet for myself peeks out.

"A man with no shirt on just rode past the doors," she said. "Go take a picture of that!"
"Take da picher, mama!" Emmie orders me, picking up immediately on Miss Bebe's tone and mannerisms.

And I do. I peer through the glass and get a shot of an older man with no shirt and a pot belly dismounting his bike. Seconds later, he walks in the door, fully clothed. I say nothing. Miss Bebe is unconcerned.

"Did you just ride by here without a shirt on?" she asks him.
"No," he says, in a way that lets us know that he totally did. But now he is wearing a grey T-shirt and a bandana over is silver hair. I hear Emmie gasp, and turn, seeing her grinning a huge, popcorn-revealing open-mouth smile, eyes wide and pudgy little hand to her cheek in a cartoonish version of delight.

"Are you a pirate?!" she asks.

Oh. My. God. I consider laying down to die right there on the concrete floor of the dealership, but at the last millisecond it occurs to me that I would then miss the joy of giving her a time-out for hurting someone's feelings.

But the guy just laughs: "No, but I am an 81," he says. I have no idea what that means. But at least he didn't get mad.