Accompanying My Accompanist

It's Monday morning after a wonderful Sunday yesterday. I accompanied my musical accompanist, Lola Flushpoole, at lunch today after she invited me to eat out. I'd much rather eat out than go home and cook and eat alone, so I was happy to accept. We ate lunch at a local Mexican restaurant. Lola is both tall and squat. She's a retired high school choir teacher, with shoulder-length gray hair and glasses, and she's full of stories. Over taco salad, she freely admitted, "I'm an only child. That's why I'm a hypochondriac. I always worried about my health because I thought that if anything happened to me, it would kill my parents and it probably would have. They waited 11 years to have me and I came after many miscarriages. So I've always been a hypochondriac. It's great now because I can go online and look up whatever disease I think I have, and a web page will tell me that yes, I have it. And that I have about two weeks to live." She smiled and went on. "I'm fat. My students used to joke about it. I didn't care. I just laughed too. I heard one of my students describing where I bought my clothes. He said, "Mrs. Flushpoole buys her clothes at one of those shops that has grande sizes. You know, Large, Extra Large, and Oh My God It's Coming This Way."