'Scuuuuuuuuuuse Me

As I stride down the small appliance aisle, I get that sick fight or flight feeling. I have no idea what to expect and will probably overreact to whatever happens. I am secretly hoping that the brain synapses that control snappy responses are all firing full throttle. I am sure that as she's been spinning, she's been practicing her delivery of one or two of the myriad hateful things she's been wishing she'd said when the had the chance.

I would have relished that confrontation once, too. God only knows how many zingers I could deliver. Plenty to say. The vocabulary to make it stick.

But I don't care now. Happy J. is gone from my life. Happy in the place I've landed. I have cut my losses and have moved onto a beautiful new life and have left him in the flotsam and jetsam of the life he ruined for himself.

Endorra can tell herself any version of that story she'd like. Revisionist History doesn't change what I know. Whatever she manages to say as I pass can't touch my heart. I. Won't. Even. Respond. Won't. That's my decision. I won't give her anything to say about me.

All this churning as I walk 10 feet past the toasters, electric mixers, hot dog roasters and ice cream makers collecting dust for another season.

I notice that Endorra has spun and teetered her way a good distance from the intersection of the aisle, and is now rotating counterclockwise near the muffin pan display. She seems to want to get back to the battle zone but can't really get there. It's like she's swimming upstream.

Seizing the moment, without breaking stride and now whistling out loud (but something happy, not "The Bitch Is Back." I think it might have been a show tune. "Zippity Doo Dah," perhaps) I whip by with my waffle iron and my bad self, making sure I looked exquisitely casual and fabulous as I did so. Posture perfect, smiling, waving pleasantly to a small child belted into her mother's shopping cart. Clearly not a care in the world.

But as I walk down the main aisle toward the check out, my eyes are darting about the place. Endorra was clearly confused and disoriented. I doubt that she drove to Kohls by herself in that condition. I am in the clear with my run in with her, but are there other family members with her that I could be ambushed by on my way to the register?