It's okay to wear black on Spring Day

One of the great things about not having a full-time job slash not having a job at all is that you can go for brisk little walks around the neighbourhood whenever the craving hits, or when you can't find your car keys and you're on your last two cigarettes and you know you're going to give up smoking in ten days and you're like "Carpe Diem! I need to smoke at least another five smokes before I go to bed, because the fun will come to an end very soon". So, you decide to hit 'burbs when, en-route, a friendly pensioner stops you in your tracks and asks you this very irrelevant, but when given some thought, relevant question.

Friendly pensioner: Excuse me little miss, why, it's such a lovely and special day today. Why are you dressed in black?

Me: Umm...my sneakers are white?

Friendly pensioner: And look, even your nails are black...

Me: They are. Yes...

Friendly pensioner: Promise me that when I see you next time you'll wear something cheerful and bright?

So I nodded and smiled and wished the friendly pensioner a happy Pensioners' Wednesday (another perk of not having a full-time job is knowing when the pensioners will be hitting the Pick 'n Pay. In case you didn't know, it's Wednesdays. Now you know) and immediately tried to figure out what the deeper meaning of this little conversation was. I've created the following reasons:

Deeper meaning #1: He probably thinks I'm from a different town or planet all together and wanted to make me feel welcome like only a Linden resident can. We just recently moved into our new house and we might have mentioned this before, but this place is seriously a Twilight Zone. It's awesome. For some weird reason, Linden is covered in pensioners and high school kids and small to medium sized dogs. Also a lot of home industry type granny's kitchen type eateries. We once spent one Saturday morning walking around Linden and I swear to you, now that I think about it, I haven't partied ever since. Instead I've spent my time baking muffins and buying amongst others, chilly and ginger(?!) jams and swooning over how cute my Andy cat is. And I'm okay with it.

Deeper meaning #2: I reminded him of his granddaughter, who, (before she got married earlier this year to that nice Afrikaans boerseun), went off the rails slightly, decided to only wear black and gray for the rest of her life, travelled the country, ended up in Lichtenburg and found the love of her life while trying to hi-jack a Jon Deere tractor. I don't know why anyone would hi-jack a tractor, but I can't think of ANYTHING remotely interesting going down in Lichtenburg. Point is, the kind pensioner knows, deep in his heart, that my road to salvation is just a marriage proposal away. Bless.

Deeper meaning #3: It's Spring Day you ignorant, self-absorbed little girl. The end.

Embarrassingly, it took me a while to put two and two together. I mean, when most of your Facebook friends' status updates are along the lines of, and I quote: "loooove the weather" and "lekker blommetjie dag" or "Happy Spring Day everybody. Summer is here" surely you should realise that you've either missed the memo, or perhaps you should go outside, smell the hayfever and wear something less black.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, HAPPY SPRING DAY! Personally, Spring has not yet sprung for me, but given some time and some fresh air and smoke-free lungs and mojito's and an answer as to why I have such a hard time locating my car keys, I might just hit the Linden streets in something colourful, even floral (?!). Yup, I'm seeing the metaphorical sun through the metaphorical trees already.