A fleeting encounter

I had an interesting experience with a total stranger yesterday.   

We were both in line at the grocery store and watched as the woman in front of us proceeded to put about 13 or 14 items on the belt in the express checkout line.  You have to understand that there’s a sign that practically screams “10 items or less” just below the big “Express Line” sign – there’s no way you can miss it. 

I noticed the woman in front of me look away with a grimace, and I quietly said to her, “you’re counting items, aren’t you?”  She looked at me and smiled and nodded and then we both started to laugh – we were both guilty of judging the woman in front of us.  And if we hadn’t laughed, we might have started a very different conversation. 

Instead of talking about how inconsiderate the woman was, we talked instead about our own experiences of being caught in the express line with more the allowable number of items – the times we’ve been in a rush and automatically headed to that line; of the time I was told by the express checkout clerk with no customers to bring my full cart through because she wasn’t busy, and then finding six angry people when I looked behind me; of how great the clerks  were and how much we like the store and how we discovered it after moving to the neighbourhood.  And we talked more, finding that every time we mentioned something new, the other had the same experience or was in a similar circumstance.  It was like meeting a new best friend.  And it all took place in about five minutes. 

You can never tell when or where you’ll meet someone you connect with.  I don’t expect I’ll see her again and even if I do, we won’t be best friends and we won’t arrange to meet for coffee.  We are strangers who shared an experience, a bit of conversation and a bit of ourselves.  It was a much nicer way to spend the time than glaring at the woman with too many items for the checkout.

A mid-year's resolution

A few years ago, I received daily emails with a “mosaic of the day”.  A mosaic artist was inspired by another artist's fundraising project – painting something small every day and offering it for sale online, with all proceeds going to a particular charity.  The mosaic artist liked the idea and did the same in mosaics and she produced some beautiful works.  Unfortunately, she was interrupted so the daily emails stopped and then I changed email addresses and I’ve never seen another one since. 

Then just this past spring, I heard a speaker at conference talk about his daily blogs.  He made himself write something every day even though he often had nothing to talk about.  His secret?  He used a random word generator to give him a word, and then he’d write something about it and try to relate or connect it to something people might be interested in.  (I tried a random word generator a few weeks ago – the word given to me was “cheerlessness” …hardly the topic for a sporadic blogger to write about.)  The point that most stayed with me was the regularity of his posts. 

The obvious thread here is that I was impressed with the commitment these two people showed when they produced something every day, no matter how difficult it proved to be.  

And that’s how I wanted to approach this blog this summer - I (privately but hopefully) resolved to write something here every day.  Well, so much for that.  And it’s probably just as well because I would have been obligated to write about cheerlessness when I had nothing to write about.  I’m pretty sure that would have been a waste of everyone’s time – mine for writing it and yours for reading it.   

So I make this resolution instead:  I resolve to write something once a week.  Something worth my time and your time.  Maybe if I make this commitment in writing, it’ll actually stick. 

I’ll see you back here next week.