When You’re 85, You Find Flattery Everywhere, Even If It’s Just a Line
Ninety-four-year-old Sophie Gobbi of Laguna Woods relayed this shopping experience of her friend, Doris Miller. It seems that Doris was in a line of folks waiting for their food orders to be prepared and mentioned to a woman in front that it was her birthday.
The woman asked: “Are you 52?”
“Fifty-two?!” replied a delighted Doris. “No, my dear, I’m 85, not 52.”
And her delight was only slightly dimmed when she realized the woman was asking her what her order number was.
Offsides! Peter Lee believes the Pasadena Convention & Visitors Bureau should be penalized for wishful thinking when it published a magazine ad in December implying that UCLA would be playing in today’s Rose Bowl for the national championship (see photo). As any USC fan can tell you, the Bruins (rhymes with “ruins”) lost their last four games to fall out of contention.
Day-tripping: Chuck Dapoz of Manhattan Beach wonders if the switching of the Rose Bowl game from Jan. 1 to today--Jan. 3--caused one branch of Washington Mutual bank to forget what day New Year’s Day is (see photo).
Great chases of 2001: One of the wackiest criminal pursuits of the past year involved a hit-and-run suspect who was stopped in Lakewood. He allegedly jumped out of his truck and yelled, “Watch out, it’s going to blow!”--then jumped back inside and sped off.
A sheriff’s deputy began coordinating nearby sheriff’s units, said Star News, a department publication, but she “was at a loss when the driver drove through the east fence of the Long Beach Airport and onto the runway.”
As the Star News pointed out: “Just saying that ‘he’s driving on 25 Right or Runway 33’ isn’t familiar” to most deputies.
Airline traffic was briefly disrupted. Luckily, the truck soon overturned, spilling its load--of porcelain toilets.
Incredible as it seems: Barry Socher saw a car with the license plate GAB and, he says, “ the driver was not talking on a cell phone.”
Then again, it wasn’t an L.A. driver. The car was from out of state.
He had the guacamole blues: The police log of the Westsider newspaper reported that, following a purchase, an angry restaurant customer “demanded more salsa. The employee gave the assailant the salsa, and the assailant demanded guacamole. When the employee told the assailant he would have to pay for the guacamole, the assailant became angry and threw the salsa.”
miscelLAny
Dan Figueroa was puzzled by a National Weather Service advisory that warned of “a large blob of moisture” headed this way last weekend.
Thank goodness it wasn’t the same gooey glop from outer space that Steve McQueen battled in the movie “The Blob” (1958).
The danger--whatever it was--passed. And, yes, I chose not to mention it until now out of fear of alarming the populace. I’m still not sure I should have mentioned the flying salsa.
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083; by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles 90012; and at steve.harvey@latimes.com.