Yesterday I took my cat to the cat doctor (a place called—I am not kidding—the Kitty Klinic) for her annual checkup/vaccination/poop analysis. Always a good time.

While I was waiting to check in, an older woman, probably around seventy or so, was trying to pay for a bag of cat food with her debit card. The card was declined, and after a couple more unsuccessful swipes, she was getting visibly distressed. This had never happened before, she said. She was sure there was money on it, she said. The receptionist dialed the customer service number on the back of the card and handed the receiver to the woman, but after listening to the automated menu for a minute or so she handed the receiver back, befuddled, because she “couldn’t get ahold of anyone.” She surmised that perhaps a thief had gotten into her account. “They can do that with computers these days.” This is when I felt my stomach starting to tighten.

The receptionist offered to try calling again and navigating the menu. While I am usually pretty cynical about the concept of so-called Minnesota Nice—which is usually closer to Minnesota Meddlesome, or Minnesota Smug, or Minnesota Passive-Aggressive—I was glad to see it employed in this case. For a split second, I even considered volunteering the strategy that many people swear by in automated caller-menu situations, which is of course to not press any buttons until finally the system defaults to an actual human being on the line, but because I seem to be hardwired toward Minding My Own Business under even the most innocuous circumstances, and because I am still, most of the time, the shy kid afraid to talk to strangers, I kept my mouth shut.

What happened next made me wish I had spoken up, or done something. “I feel like I’m going to cry,” the woman said. She declined the receptionist’s offer for any further help. “I think I should just go home,” she said.

I should mention here that the one trope to which I have the least resistance—in film, literature, or life—is that of the Helpless/Lonely Older Woman/Mother Who Is A Victim Of The System. Perhaps because I inevitably imagine my own mother in some variant of this situation, I always find it excruciating. This is why Ellen Burstyn’s arc in Requiem For A Dream was far more unbearable for me than any prostitution/imprisonment/heroin-related-amputation scenarios.

So the woman paid for the cat food with cash and left the Kitty Klinic, and the receptionist and I exchanged crinkly-faced “isn’t that a shame” expressions. I watched her cross the street, and this is where the death blow came: she opened up an umbrella. Not because it was raining, but for protection from the sun. I don’t know why, and I realize it makes me sound like an idiot, but it was this final element made me want to cry and/or punch myself in the face.

I’d like to think she had a short walk home, and then called her adult son, who lives in town or maybe in the suburbs, and who dropped everything at the office and got on the phone with the credit card company and straightened the whole thing out and then after work came right over and made dinner and watched Brothers and Sisters with her.

That’s what I hope, anyway. But then, I’m a total mama’s boy, and proud of it.

On the upside, I got a microchip put in my cat’s neck. OMG LOL LASERS THE FUTURE ETC