Turn about is fair play...

So, I told you about Bern losing last Wednesday. On the other hand there is my trip to Stop and Shop this afternoon.

I found a really close space, though the store was full of folks, and entered the left hand entrance. I got my food--though they were apparently out of Carmel Sea Salt Gelato, which is my all time favorite. And the Gelato was on sale two for one. So I got Pistachio and Coffee chocolate chip. Which are wondrous while falling short of Carmel Sea Salt.

I checked out and paid with Bern's Discover card, which we use to buy most everything since she pays it in full each month and gets money back a few times a year.

Then I went to the Customer Service counter to get a pack of cigarettes. Smoking I know is bad/bad/bad. But I like it and like the way my mouth tastes after a Marlboro Medium. So it goes.

I turned to leave the store and remembered, just before going out the door, that I should go out the door in the other direction and when almost there I realized I didn't have my glasses on. I thought I might have taken them off looking for Carmel Sea Salt Gelato, which took a while, so I parked my cart and went back to the frozen food place. Not there.

So I go to the aisle I checked out in. Not there.

Finally, I thought of the Customer Service counter and there they were.

So, I went to the car--out the right door this time.

(The problem with my glasses is that I see perfectly fine inside without them. I need them to drive, mostly. I lose them a couple of dozen times each day in our house, taking them off to read and cook and wash clothes and other inside stuff like that.  I used to ALWAYS need my glasses but I had two cataract operations 2 months apart about 12 years ago and they corrected my vision so I don't need glasses to, for example, be typing this. I tried graduated invisible bi-focals but they were more trouble than they were worth, so my glasses correct my distant vision and I mostly don't wear them inside.)

Problem was, I got to my car, put my groceries (including two delicious but NOT Carmel-Sea Salt Gelato) and searched my pockets in vain for my car keys. Back I go to the aisle I checked out from and no keys. "Ah-ha!" I think, laid them down to put my card through the gizmo where I paid for my Marlboro Mediums (calling cigarettes "Light" or "Medium" is just a way smokers have of justifying their addiction....) But there was a line of 7 people. I waited while people bought Lotto tickets and returned out of date stuff and finally walked to the front and said to the woman behind the counter--'car keys?' Without missing a beat she reached down and handed them to me.

Maybe I should drive myself to THE HOME, but I wouldn't know where my glasses or car keys were....

It is a privilege to grow old...but I'm reminded of an encounter with an old mountain woman in Fairmont, West Virginia when I was a social worker. "It's not a sin to be poor," she told me, "but it's a damned inconvenience..."

It is a privilege to age, but it is a damned inconvenience to always be looking for stuff....