As you know, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not a fan of other people's kids.
You know the ones. Those kids in a store who find it necessary to stare
at Mrs. HM like she is some kind of circus freak. It's not like I have
big flappy shoes and an orange afro and drive a tiny car with 101 of my
bulbous-nosed friends riding shotgun. Give it a rest, kids. I have spent
a 28-year career being polite out of necessity, and I don't have
anybody to answer to now.
So...Sunday I was at the
front counter of Save A Lot, putting my groceries in bags. No need for a
box, which I usually prefer, because I only had a couple of items. Just
two tubs of sour cream, two jars of salsa, and a bag of shredded
lettuce. I was taking my purchases from the cart and placing them in two
separate bags. The sour cream and lettuce in a bag to go in my
soft-sided Cardinals cooler in the rear of T-Hoe, and the salsa in a bag
by itself.
A little dark-haired boy, maybe six years
old, walked up and stood on the other side of my cart. I assume it was
his mom at the next bagging station. I was silently fuming. I'd seen
them as I was wheeling around the store. The kid wasn't loud or
anything. Not grabby. But now he was standing there, staring at me.
Sweet Gummi Mary, lady! Teach that boy some manners! It's not polite to
stare!
I did not follow the advice of blog buddy Linda, and get down on his level, and look him right in the eye. It's not like he was doing anything wrong. Just standing. Watching.
As I looped the two bags over my forearm, and readied T-Hoe's clicker in my hand, the little boy spoke.
"I can take your cart and put it up."
Well. Ain't THAT a kick in the head? He was just being polite to an old lady.
"Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much."
I
wanted to tell him he was a good boy, but that would have sounded like
maybe he was an animal, or a pet in training. So I stopped myself. I
glanced at his mom as I walked by. She wasn't looking at me. But I could
see a little smile around the corners of her mouth. I'm pretty sure she
was proud of him.
I'm pretty sure she should have been.
What an almost-extinct creature you encountered. In the BigCity, we keep that species--the polite person--in cages. We have some adults and a few young ones. We're hoping they mate and multiply, but it's slow going...
ReplyDeleteMy sister used to work on a weekly newspaper in a very small town in Georgia. It was mostly gossip, very little "news". Who went to church, where they had dinner and with which friends or family members. They had a segment dedicated to a picture and article explaining called "Caught Doin' Good". If only the little boy lived in a tiny town in south Georgia, he would get his picture in the paper.
ReplyDeleteI was sitting outside with my son's Cub Scout den on a chilly day, waiting for their parents to pick them up. Without saying a word one of the boys took off his jacket & draped it over my shoulders!!
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteThey are probably relieved to be caged, for safety reasons!
***
Kathy,
We used to have a section like that in our Daily Journal. I'm pretty sure they still have it, but don't have enough material to publish it very often. It's once in a blue moon now.
The last one, though, was a guy who cut a man's seatbelt and pulled him out of a burning car. Not sure if they put it in that column, though. I'm pretty sure it made the headline page.
***
fishducky,
Kids those days!
That was a sweet thing to do. The best I ever caught my own kids doing was holding a door open for the elderly. Pretty sure The Pony wasn't the one. The #1 Son gets all the credit!