Overheard

"It says it right there in the Bible. If a woman wants to make extra money, she's got to figure out how to do it from her home."

This from a large woman in a Nampa Subway sandwich shop. It was not the first thing she said, but it was the first I heard clearly after I sat down. 

She wasn't speaking to me, but she was facing my direction and talking loud enough for me to know very soon that she was an authority on her subject. Self-proclaimed. The two women she addressed her remarks to had their backs to me, but it was easy to see they were each less than half her weight. They gave her no argument. 

Hmph. And they say size doesn't matter.

"It's why we were made the way we were. God meant women to stay home." And other arguments, all of which I've heard many times before, until she reached another point where the Bible evidence was given again. "It's right there in the Bible. If a woman wants extra money she has to make it from her home."

I did not stand and ask for chapter and verse, but I thought of it.

Her voice accompanied my entire lunch, not that I asked for it. There were other people in the place, too, talking to one another, but her voice stood out, so to speak.

Now, there's this. I might agree with her on at least one thing: If you have children and don't have to work, you ought to stay home with them and raise them. That is if you are not a drug addict or worse. (It's the world we live in.) 

But there was much in her voice, her presentation, her failure to cite chapter and verse for her Bible proof, and--I have to admit it--her size and the fact that she was able to eat her foot long sandwich while she spoke, that allowed me to say, under my breath, "Oh yeah?" and otherwise be pretty darn critical of her.

Sorry.