Fun At Work; Or, How I Freaked Out the Amish Ladies

It was a typically busy weekend morning at my current place of employment, a retail store/restaurant that serves old-fashioned country-style meals.

I wandered the retail store (I am really beginning to hate that word, "retail") looking for potential customers. However, nearly every person in the store at the moment was in line waiting to enter the adjoining dining room. Apparently they were all hungry.

After nodding hello to some new visitors as they entered the building, I suddenly froze as I saw an all-too-familiar figure striding out from the restroom area. Oh, not that I knew that particular person as an individual, but rather it was the woven straw hat, beard, and suspenders (or braces, as we re-enactors call them) that caught my eye.

Yes indeed, I thought to myself, the Amish have arrived.

The Amish, you see, look suspiciously similar to the people at a local Baptist church I once attended. It's not that I didn't like the people there, but only that I didn't fit in with them very well. I could never be Amish.

However, I like Amish people very much and I think they have the right idea...get Back to Basics (a favourite book of mine from the 1970s) and live close to the land. Work hard and live on what you make. Don't depend on technology or people. Sounds good to me! :D

But anyway. I circled round the small group of Amish people waiting to get into the dining room, acting rather like a shark eyeing its victims before going in for the kill.

Finally, choosing the right moment, I swooped down upon two little old ladies.

"Good morning, ladies!"

They nodded and smiled warily -- at least I think they did, from what I could tell. Their heads were mostly covered by their black bonnets.

"Do you," I asked out of nowhere, "happen to use bonnet board?"

They exchanged dumbfounded and rather frightened looks. "What?" one of them asked finally.

"Do you use bonnet board?" I repeated patiently, gesturing toward their bonnets.

"Why...yes. We do," the other replied, giving me a tentative smile.

How on earth, they must have been thinking, does this crazy Englischer know about bonnet board?

I answered their unspoken question by explaining, "I do Civil War re-enacting and sometimes we use bonnet board to make our bonnets."

"Ah," they said, nodding and smiling benignly. I excused myself and walked away grinning.

It was only later that I realised that telling a group of people who are probably pacifists that I re-enact the Civil War was most likely not a statement designed to win me brownie points.

But then, I just got done saying that I could never be Amish, so why do I care? LOL!

It's fun to freak out the customers. In a good way, of course.

O:D