She says Doll is her stage-name

As I was entering my building, this woman arrested me. “Stop a minute. I’ve been seeing you for years, you come and go, you smile, but you don’t sit around and talk. Who the hell are you?” 

She made me laugh. She says she made her living as a barkeeper in Louisiana and Texas, but her real calling is acting, theatre. When I told her I was a theatre professor, she said, “You’re shittin’ me. No way. I don’t believe you. You’re giving me a heart attack. Really? Nobody likes me here, I don’t know why. Maybe they think I’m crazy. Or maybe it’s because I’m just blunt, and I can be obscene. I'm not easy to get along with, I'll give them that. I hope you don’t mind.”

Not at all. She said she’d like to organize a few people in the building to do play readings. She squinted at me, “If you’re really a retired theatre professor, you’ll have some plays we can look at.”

I said I happen to have one I think would be perfect for a group of people in a facility like ours, and I brought her down a copy of Home, by David Storey. I saw it performed by John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson in New York in 1971, and I’ve always wanted to work on it. (I just discovered the entire play with those very actors is on Youtube. There goes another hour or two, see you later.)

“Put your email and phone number on the cover so I can find you if I like it,” Doll said.

We’ll see if anything comes of it. At least I got a photograph for today.