“You talkin’-a’ me?”

That’s Robert De Niro playing Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976).
I was in the Canandaigua YMCA swimming-pool last Saturday doing my usual on-my-own balance-training.
My widow-friend, older than me, had already waved hello, and now I was poolside, stretching. I was facing out of the pool.
Suddenly my widow-friend was behind me striking up a conversation. I was stunned. “You talkin’-a’ me?”
I managed to engage, despite being flummoxed at first. Later I realized she might have been put off by my being so confused.
“A little history,” I said.
“My parents were Bible-beating Baptists. At an early age I was told I was stupid and reprehensible because I couldn’t worship my father.
‘No one will ever talk to you!’ I was told.”
She gave me a pained look, then told me the reason she skipped an eat-out was because her daughter came home from France.
A few of us eat out once per week. We’re all bereaved, and pay for our own meals. I had invited her.
“I had to do tons of laundry,” she said.
“So you’re the laundry-lady,” I snapped.
She laughed. Order restored. I love to see her laugh; she lights up the pool.
“They marked me for life,” I said. “That’s why I was flustered when you first talked to me. But that was all 70 years ago. I usually don’t say anything because it’s a sob-story.
When someone singles me out for conversation, especially female, I am stunned.”
“No pretty girl will ever talk to you!”

• I do aquatic balance training in the Canandaigua YMCA’s swimming-pool, two hours per week — plus a third hour on my own.
• “No girl will talk to you” is the infamous Hilda Q. Walton, my neighbor and Sunday-School Superintendent when I was a child. She convinced me all pants-wearers, including me, were SCUM; my parents heartily agreed. I’ve since discovered this was bunk.