There were other words, too. Words like, "They lied!" Words we've all heard, verified for the most part, and, on a personal level, have had to find ways to cope with through the last uneasy years. I like to think the best part of being human is acknowledging each other. So how could I not acknowledge her apron?

Or, for that matter, comment on her apron?

Not a smug remark, mind you, but something humorous, something to shed some light on the dimness of current politics, no matter what side of the issues you cling to. Because while some people clam up when they are nervous, I speak.

Now, sitting here, I keep coming back to the words I said: "Wow. I can see what's on your mind. Literally."

Sort of funny, right? I mean isn't a woman wearing an apron-billboard sort of proverbially funny? When did that kind of thing stop being funny?

See. She didn't think my comment was funny. In fact, her mouth writhed sideways, as if she'd bit into a lemon. Then she said my comment was inappropriate.

I laughed, thinking she was kidding, but she wasn't. All I could think of as my words seemed to bounce off the sidewalk and echo through her apron, is that there is so much growing up that still needs to occur.

"Inappropriate? Really?" I muttered, a little sarcastically.

Throughout the next year, how are we ever going to bear this election cycle if we can't, at least, share a laugh about the sorry state of world affairs that most of us have so little say over anyway? Because, while I may agree with her opinion, and certainly with her right to wear it, I don't agree with her reaction to my reaction, especially because she seems to want the world to believe she is so very progressive.

Ta da. Meet the liberal/progressives's worst enemy: Ourselves.

Because you can't call yourself a progressive if you've lost your sense of humor.

Now, if I had told the woman what I really thought about her silly apron, that would have been inappropriate, I agree. Instead, I tried to connect with her. So why not a little give and take? A little: one woman's graffiti'd apron is another woman's haute couture?

Because what does it earn us if we achieve political gain but have no light-hearted charity toward others? Doesn't that mean, then, that the price of our principles will also be our loss? If not of an election, than of the best things that make us human, things like shared laughter and conversing without judgement? The very characteristics so many liberals say they are about.

Maybe my meeting this aproned woman was just another example of how my Back East sense of humor can backfire this far west.

Or maybe it's that some people are just what my mom likes to call "fuddy-duddies," not about to laugh about anything. Because a woman wearing her politics on an apron is looking for a reaction. Right? Otherwise she'd be wearing a short skirt over long jeans like everyone else.

The whole incident reminded me of the young boy I encountered on the ferry a few weeks back. He wore a purple Mohawk haircut that stood up, say, a foot above his scalp line. Yet, when I turned to look he yelled, "What are you looking at?" in that vehement way pink-faced kids-with-a-lot-to-prove will. But here's the thing: he is a kid. Which, in itself, makes his lack of humor more forgivable as he struggles to figure out if he is this, that, or the other enough.

Still, a part of me wanted to turn around and say how hopelessly passe Mohawks are. But I weighed the likelihood of a comment, which, in this case, was inappropriate, against the likelihood of his getting my playfulness, which I completely doubted because when I turned ever so slightly around, his face contorted with meanness just before he flipped me off.

In response, I threw in my two cents. Then I ran to my car so fast that my favorite hair scrunchie slid free.

Maturity, as my mother also likes to say, is a lifelong process.