Miskatonic University PressEarly this afternoon I was walking south down a major street in Toronto near where I live. A red car, southbound, appears from behind me, pulls to the side, and parks a short ways ahead of me. A grey-haired woman, about 60, short and squat, gets out from the passenger side. She is wearing a long wool coat and a longer dress or skirt, and has a long scarf around her neck. She comes towards me on the sidewalk, walking in the opposite direction to her previous travel. I assume she is going to one of the apartment buildings along the street.
When she is very near, she looks at me and says, “Do you speak Polish?”
“No.”
“Russian?”
“No.”
She nods. “Thank you.” Then she walks back to the small red car and it drives off.
I have been unable to come up with any reasonable explanation for this. Do I look, from behind, like I speak Polish? What if I had said yes? Perhaps some things are best left unknown.