Even this town has its odd ones

Waiting for the bus in front of the Rideau Centre, I was approached by a woman who asked me something in a voice too soft to be heard over the noise of cars going by. At first, I thought she was asking me for the time; then, I took a closer look and thought she must be asking me for change. She was wearing a long black dress, a necklace of big plastic peals hung to her knees and black ruffles were peeking out of the sleeves of her sweater, the hood of which was pulled up over a tuque. On her hands were green and white gardening gloves, the kind you get for a couple of bucks at Zellers, and she was holding a small toothbrush up at chest level.

"Do you know what a wedding shower is?" she asked me, with a noticeable francophone accent. For the next few minutes, she told me about wedding showers, about how some people didn't have the money to buy new things when they got married so their friends gave them the necessary to set up house. She said something about New Brunswick, her voice occasionally drowned out by the roar of buses pulling up to and away from the curb, about how she'd once had a house full of things but didn't know who had them now. "If I had something that I didn't like or didn't need, I'd give it to someone else to use," she said, before thanking me and walking away.