It happened at Walmart. Seriously.
OK, so I have been known to enter Walmart under duress --
-- like the time Coleen sent me squealing out of the parking lot of the Brownie Encampment she was running so that I could fetch more crucial but dwindling camping supplies, by which I mean glitter and Mod-Podge.
Or the time my procrastinating tall boy was in the midst of printing the final draft and graphs and charts for the all-important Science Fair project (fifth grade but I still suffer from the PTSD), and the printer died, and my husband is a computer genius but like an evil genius in that he has very specific notions of what is an acceptable printer, and I can just tell you they don't sell it at Walmart. Oh -- and it was two o'clock in the morning.
It's really about a subtle, "I don't know you, and thus I don't care about you" attitude that I just see way more at Walmart than anywhere else. We've all read horrible stories about fisticuffs breaking out over a Wii, --
So because I rag on Walmart way too much, I felt that I needed to tell you what I saw this morning, as I left with my emergency craft paint. You know how Walmart has those people who sit at the door and say good-bye, and check your packages and monitor the alarm? Well, today the lady at the door was a woman who has worked at our Walmart since it opened fifteen years ago. She was really old then -- so goodness knows how old she is now. She's a classic blue-haired lady -- she could be my grandmother.
As I was leaving, a younger (thirty-five-ish?) black man came up to her, took both her hands in his, and very gently kissed her on the forehead. Then he continued out the door with his cart. She looked after him, a little dazed, and said, "Bye, now!" I wish I had a picture.