The old woman sits on the sidewalk in a white plastic chair that’s missing an arm. Her many-times-too-big jacket is tucked tightly around her waist and her wool hat is pulled down snug around her smelted-iron gray hair. She watches the street with a flat expression as she leans back against a chain link fence that protects this small dirt lot in Brooklyn, New York.

Yup, I am totally staring at her as I’m walking the streets of Brooklyn waiting for a family wedding to start.

Suddenly, the old woman sits up and looks at me looking at her. She grins.

It’s no secret, I’m partial to older women. Always have been. Even before I became an old man myself, I thought there was some kind of magic surrounding older women that made them tough and unbending and willing to say whatever they think to anyone who is in need of a little instruction. Old women earned this right from a lifetime of holding it all together — work, kids, marriages, deaths, birthday gifts, shopping lists, changing the cat litter — so that the rest of us didn’t have to do it.  And now as old women, they are sharp-witted and hard. And most importantly, they have no time for fools.

“Piano may not really be your path.” This was the piano teacher of my youth, Mrs. Russell, who I returned to as an adult student during my college years. She smiled and laughed and taught me my favorite Elton John songs well into her 80’s as she tapped along with her narrow wooden pointer.

“You don’t think I’ll make my living from playing the piano?”

“Nope,” she said matter-of-factly. And offered me some homemade apple pie, something I was good at mastering.

Okay, check that career off the list.

“You need to actually ask a girl out to get a date,” said my two old aunts, who took care of each other as they aged. As I entered my early 20’s, they frequently invited me for fine dining in Davenport, Iowa, where they lived. I’d pick them up and they’d be dressed in their best cotton dresses with hats and gloves and necklaces. We’d cross the Mississippi River and eat in some darkened restaurant with candlelight and laughter.

“Do you want an alcoholic drink?” says my Aunt Rita at the end of our meal.

Really?

“Yes, we’re all going to have Grasshoppers,” my Aunt Cecelia chimes in.

By the way, older women liquored up are even more dangerous than regular older women.

“Joe, you know you have to ask a girl out to actually get a date?” begins Aunt Cecelia after finishing her drink.

“And the long hair, Joe, do you think that’s attractive?” tag-teams Aunt Rita. “And what are you doing about your skin?”

Then they both grin with tight mouths and dancing eyes and poke me in the ribs with those sharp elbows older women hone for these types of occasions.

I got their point.

“Joe, you need to treat people a little less like a lawyer.” Shirley, an older cop, would sit my young prosecutor naiveté in a chair and tell me in her crusty, gravely voice what was really going on.

“This is not a murder. It’s two families feuding and a horrible accident happened.”

How do you know?

“Because I talked to all the witnesses who refused to talk to the investigators.”

Why did they talk to you?

“Because I smoked a cigarette with them, we shared a pop, and I treated them like real people.”

Well, they didn’t teach that in law school . . . but Shirley, who never minced a word, taught an advanced course in Empathy 101.

Meanwhile, here I am in Brooklyn and the old woman continues to grin at me.

“Beautiful day,” I say.

In strongly accented English, she says, “It is beautiful day.”

The dirt lot behind the woman was a hodgepodge of old plastic buckets, a wooden boat sitting on end against a shed, and a red-hatted gnome placed high on a pigeon coop. A dozen pigeons pecked at the dry dirt.

“Is this your home?” I ask, eyeballing the gnome.

“Yes, but from Poland.”

Trying to smooth the conversation, I say, “Your English is quite good.”

She nods in agreement.

“Where is your home?” she says to me.

I am surprised by her question.

“Iowa.”

She chews on that for a bit, scratches the side of her wire hair, and then says:

“Your English not so good.”

Whaaaaat? Is she being sassy?

And she chuckles, rocks back against the metal fence, gives me a warm smile, refuses a picture, and resumes watching the street.

See, what did I tell you, older women . . . no time for fools.

Joe