Helping the Little Old Lady

10 Nov 2006

My annual doctor's appointment two days ago registered my first significant weight gain in all my years, and I now carry 2 sets of glasses with me to complement my contact lenses. My brow is furrowed, to say the least.

So I'm at work yesterday and I go out for my little walkabout during lunch (will that take care of the extra pounds?). Stopping in at all my favourite haunts to browse, consider, wander, I decide to go to my soup shop to get the selection of the day to bring back to my desk. While I love this little soup shop, the lighting at the cash register is very 'moody', meaning that it's not very bright. With 2 sets of glasses now, I'm beginning to not appreciate ambience.

So my soup is listed on the chalkboard as $2.99, having gone up 25 cents since the last time I purchased it, and yes, there's tax, so now I don't know ahead of time what my total will be. "$3.17, ma'am", says the teenager (I'm sure) behind the cash register. (And yes, I note being addressed as "ma'am" with mild irritation, but of late, have accepted that, along with my rounding middle.) I have 3 loonies in my hand because I never pay more than $3.00 for lunch, cheapskate that I am.

So, in the moody light, I'm forced to retrieve my wallet from my purse and I begin rummaging for 17 cents, rummaging being a family trait that I’m proud of. I don't know about you, but I'm a bit fixated on my change. I don't like to carry heaps and heaps of it around. If I can give a cashier exact change, it's one of my small pleasures in life, emoting a tiny, triumphal "Aha!", each time I can do it.

So I get flustered with the teenage cashier and the moody lighting and which glasses should I wear and the growing lunch line-up behind me, and end up pulling out all of my change. I can find a dime easily enough, (it's the smallest) and 2 pennies easily enough, (color contrasts work for me) but damn if I can tell a quarter from a nickel any more. In being flustered, I flatten my palm to make the most of my ambient lighting sans glasses, and lo and behold, the cashier takes this as a signal that permission has been granted to dig through my palmed coin collection. He finds the blessed nickel while I'm murmuring something about "poor lighting", "I can never tell...", ravings, really, of a pending senior.

I grab my soup, and actually chuckle, with a deeper furrow in my brow, all the way back to my desk, soup in hand, thinking, "when did that happen?" I've been behind many a little old lady just like that, and I hope those behind me are as patient and sympathetic as I used to be.