Tuesday, August 5, 2014

The dill soldier and my blind wafer eye




I walked out of Kroger, unwrapping this wafer bar. As I bit into it in the parking lot like a hungry T-rex, a flake of wafer flew directly into my eye.  Just as I was clawing at my eye, the oldest man on earth pulled his ark-sized Buick up next to me and beckoned me over.  I was carrying all my grocery bags in one hand so I could swipe at my watering wafer eye with the other.  I stumbled blindly over to the old man, and he asked me a weird question.

"Do you know where I could find dill?"

I said, "Yes, Kroger has dill. It's in the spice aisle."

He said, "No, not that kind of dill.  I need the kind you use to make pickles."

By then my eye was really bothering me, and my arm was getting sore from all the grocery bags hanging off it.  My patience was ebbing away as I explained that I'd never made pickles and didn't know what he needed.  He started describing it as "a green plant that grows to about three feet tall with feathery little leaves," and I said, "Oh, you mean fresh dill?"  He said yes, and I said, "Kroger has fresh dill. It's in the produce section."  He smiled huge, thanked me, and parked farther down the row from me. I loaded my groceries, got in my car, and tried to pry the wafer out of my eye.  When I backed out of my parking spot, the old guy was standing there saluting me like a soldier.

1 comment:

mike said...

You're a hero!