Monday, August 7, 2017

The Curmudgeon Is Taught A Lesson By A Child

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.

4 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

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...

Kathy's Klothesline said...

My 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.

Anonymous said...

I 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!!

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
They 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!