I met a sad old lady
I was driving around town yesterday and happened to drive past the house where my childhood friend Tom's father and grandparents lived when we were kids in the '80s. Tom lived out of town but he usually stayed there on the weekends, and I went there a lot to watch movies or TV (they had a VCR and cable TV, both of which were still sort of luxuries at the time) or just hang out.
As I drove by I noticed that Jeff, Tom's younger brother, was sitting in the yard along with two old ladies. I hadn't seen him since about 1992. He hollered to me so I stopped. He had some old vehicles in his yard, including a 1965 Ford Fairlane and a 1978 Ford F150 4WD; he definitely took after Tom in that regard. When we were kids, Tom and I mostly talked about cars (and girls).
So we got to talking about his old vehicles and his plans for them, and my old car, and out of the blue, one of the old ladies asked me if I knew Scott _____. I said, "Yeah, he was working at the Chrysler dealership last I knew; he did a frontend alignment on my car several years ago."
Her face lit up and she said, "I'm his mother!" and she started asking me questions about him, such as how he was doing, if he still worked at the dealership, and so on. I couldn't answer any of her questions because I barely know him.
Then she said, "You've seen him more than I have. He won't have anything to do with me. Next time you see my boy tell him you saw his mother and that I miss him."
I've never understood what could possibly go so wrong between a parent and child that they become estranged (outside of one of them committing some major violent crime such as murder or rape).