Jen was working last night so I tooled around town on my bicycle like a little punk kid. I swung into the main park in Santa Clara and they had a rockabilly band playing in the courtyard so I stopped in for a few minutes. The people-watching was more entertaining than the music.

Up near the stage was an old drunk pirate hooker with a cane, dancing and yelling at everyone else in the crowd to get up and dance. The majority of the crowd seemed to be the type of middle-aged conservative folks with kids and dogs you would expect to see at a weeknight concert in the park. Y’know, the kind that look the other way when someone expects them to dance? People like me. Except for the pirate lady. She stole the show.

That’s her to the left of center, dancing away, very carefully. When no one was dancing near her, she would take to yelling something in a  high-pitched Asian dialect that I don’t think anyone could understand. When someone - usually a cute old couple - started dancing even more slowly next to her, she would lean back on her cane and look approvingly upon them.

The lead guitar guy in the band liked to talk between the songs. The pirate lady didn’t like this. She’d start off glaring menacingly at the band until they started playing. If he kept talking, that screeching Asian dialect would overwhelm anything the poor guy had to say. Luckily, once they started playing again, she’d go back to her less-than-graceful, teetering dance and her accusatory yammering would be directed at all of those losers just sitting down. I was just hoping she wouldn’t see me in the back, not dancing. She was not a force I was prepared to reckon with.