Front line story

A thin little lady came to me to check out her groceries yesterday. She made a point of telling me, “Don’t put too many cans in one bag. I can’t lift heavy things.”

I packed three cans of veggies and one box of cereal into the first bag and slid it down the counter. She hefted it and declared, “No. That’s too heavy,” and removed the box of cereal. I tried to be careful about how many cans went into the bags I packed, but she proceeded to rearrange and repack everything to her own satisfaction. All the while explaining how she was unable to lift hardly anything at all anymore because one of her arms was weaker than the other due to some surgery or an injury or something.

At the end of the checking and all the packing and repacking, she had about six plastic bags sitting at her end of the checkout counter. I noticed my line was getting a little longer, but we all watched and waited patiently while she gave each one a final inspection - and then swooped them all together and hefted them in one heap into her grocery cart.

I tried not to laugh and turned my head away from her. The next lady in line caught my eye and we both spent the next few minutes suppressing giggles while the poor little weakling wrote out her check and hurried away. Then the next lady told me, “I used to work in a grocery store, too. I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

And we shared a laugh.