When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
I was obsessed with a middle aged couple who were constantly touching. Face stroking, leg stroking, hand holding, snuzzling, face cupping, ear tickling. More, they kept looking to see who was looking at them, and then they’d look away as if you were prurient. Then there were two women, one small and stooped over, the other big and stooped over both in a tan bucket hats. There were two friends who kept screaming about their experience last year watching the murmuration. They were swathed in backpacks, fanny packs, binocular holders, rain jackets and tevas. Mostly I fell in love with the young man from Audubon who told us where to look, one o’clock, two o’clock, directly above us. He knew every bird in our state and their habits. He had dimples and manners and lived a life.
Are writers people watchers more than most?
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Betsy Lerner 
“Are writers people watchers more than most?”
I don’t know. I think we writers watch for certain signs of what people are doing. Most of what people are doing is formally inconsequential. But there are those things that are the highlights. We want to capture those.
That first couple? Annoying. My husband and I “met” a couple when we were in VA for an event, and stopped to eat lunch first. We wandered out onto the patio afterwards to look out over the James River, and this couple were doing the same, but while looking, he kept messing with her hair, rubbing her shoulder, stroking her arms, kissing her cheek, leaning in to lock eyes, and I turned to my husband and said, “That guy creeps me out. If you had ever done any of that so persistently, and publicly, we would not have been married.”
He laughed, and then? That couple came over and started talking to us and the ENTIRE time, the guy kept doing all of it. Nope. Nope. Nope.
“Are writers people watchers more than most?”
I think it’s more that there are certain people, period, who watch more than others. Classic case in point – my husband (yep, about him again). He actually embarrasses ME sometimes b/c he doesn’t really people watch, per se, he gawks, to the point of rudeness. 🙄