There are times when you're confronted with the confounding unexpected. Last week, for example, when we were at a garden centre and chose a few perennials to add to our garden. The plants were displayed in their hundreds, on long elevated shelving. We perused them all, walking along the aisles between the shelving, and just loved what we saw. And so, we decided to buy a few of them. We discussed which we preferred, and then chose the winners. Lifting them each down in their pots onto the cart provided by the garden centre.

 

While I went off to look at a few other things, Irving pulled the cart over to the check-out, and just then a young woman approached, swooped down and lifted one of the pots off the cart to carry it off. What're you doing? Irving asked, that's a plant we're buying! She responded by saying we had taken 'her' choice of plant. She had lifted it off the platform, placed it on the ground, and we had picked it up. No such thing, said Irving, and asked her to return it.

 

She placed it back on the cart, I returned to join him, unaware of what had taken place. We paid and rolled the cart through the parking lot to our truck and loaded the six pots and as we were doing that the woman came by, said she hoped we'd enjoy our flowers, and we weren't very nice people. To which she added a few other choice phrases, and we recommended she make herself scarce.

 

A week earlier as we entered the ravine, Jillie began barking, alerting Jackie, and they both ran ahead toward a bend in the trail where a young girl, no more than 15 or 16 stood by the side, with her harnessed and leashed boxer. Jillie has an irritating habit of barking at dogs she doesn't know. Her barking sends Jackie into a frenzy of instant hostility, and he darted at the boxer. The girl shrieked, your dog bit my dog! 

 

We caught up and I apologized for their awful behaviour. The girl kept shouting at us, saying she was a dog trainer and screamed at us all manner of accusatory charges. Most people in the ravine are familiar with Jackie and Jillie, including most dogs they know and are friendly with. We'd never seen this poor girl before and she was hysterical. Irving told her to just get on with it, and we began to walk away, but she continued charging us and Jackie and Jillie with brutality toward her dog. Irving hasn't the patience for histrionics, and let fly a few of his own choice phrases.

 

Today, when we were out with the pups for our afternoon hike through the forest we came across a woman we've seen before, but aren't too familiar with. The usual cheery greetings took place, and she asked how we were, then proceeded to tell us a surprising story. She had seen a message on Facebook, she said, about an elderly pair with two small poodles who had been horribly abusive to the writer's daughter. She described an encounter that sounded pretty awful as having taken place, according to the mother who offered some gruesome details about horrible people wandering about the woods, threatening her daughter.

 

When this woman saw the description of the two elderly people with two little dogs, she said she knew exactly to whom the report was referring, and took it upon herself to respond. She knew the people in question, being charged by this mother of an abused young girl -- and the description of the encounter, she related to us as having written back, didn't quite fit the character of the people she knew. Which we thanked her for.

The subject of the zeitgeist of our times -- victimization -- and the ongoing search for 'justice' -- made for an interesting conversation to follow.