Personal Narrative- The Lonely Middle-Aged Woman :: Personal Narrative Writing

Personal Narrative- The Lonely Middle-Aged Woman I got off the bus, not knowing where I had to travel in the cold night. I had a rough idea, but I’ve been having terrible luck trusting my rough ideas lately. I thought I’d ask someone for details. The passengers that had gotten off the bus with me obviously knew where they were going, because their strides were purposeful and quick. Looking for someone to help, I turned to a middle-aged lady in smart business clothes and voiced my question. She looked at me strangely for a second, as though I was speaking a foreign language, then just as quickly she snapped out of it and told me the direction I had to walk. Then she added "But I have to go that way. I can give you a ride if you’d like." When she said that my mind traveled years back to primary school, when they would sit us all down on the floor and try to convince us not to do stupid things. Don’t light fires. Don’t play with guns. Don’t trust anyone wearing a trench coat. Don’t accept rides from strangers. I’ve broken most of these, except the trench coat one, so I decided that I should accept her offer. The situation, statistically speaking, was more dangerous for her than for me. Newspapers are hardly littered with stories about middle-aged women kidnapping and torturing innocent teenage boys. We walked to her car. She pointed it out to me, and I wasn’t surprised to see that it was a little red two-door BMW. She opened the door for me first and I slipped into the leather seats, running my hands along the wood dashboard that contained an elaborate stereo system. I pictured her zipping along the road, humming happily along to a Brahms concerto. Or maybe some jazz. I didn’t ask her. Sitting in her car I was consumed by warmth, not just from the heating, but because of her. If men use cars as penis extensions, this was the female equivalent. We kept talking. It was on a different level to small talk, but neither of us said what we were thinking. I felt her quiet desperation- she told me of her divorce; or rather she talked enough to let it slip. She talked about her sons and their jobs and wives. I’ve never experienced any of it but I had an idea how she felt.