twosmallmonsters

I am running morning errands for Judith- grocery store & the delicatessen- as I always do at this particular time on this particular morning. It is in this ritual during pre-planned time slots of perusing the produce section that I enjoy patterns. The same people pass me by as they do each week: the same employee who I have learned to trust for grocery guidance when common sense fails me, the St Paul fire department who shop in full fireman gear & talk to each other with walkie talkies, and the man in the top hat with thick gold chains around his neck sporting a cane. Grocery store aisles become a elaborately timed dance ritual. I pass the fire department in the produce, meat, and canned fish aisles. We meet in the middle, smile, and continue separate paths only to reunite next to the papertowl display five aisles down. But on this day I am greeted by someone who has not made an impression on my life.

The check-out woman is fifty-something, small, brown and gray haired, and her eyeliner has begun to smear already. Nonetheless, she is wearing pink bunny ears. I question whether Easter is this weekend or the next. The man in line ahead of me is tall and an estimated sixty-something. He approaches the register with a smile:
"Why you look real nice today, Maddy. Nice like a little bunny rabbit does. I dig those ears." She smiles too and her bunny-ness is achieved. Somewhere behind me, a fireman is playing catch with a canned good.