Today as I was leaving the Dollar Store, a signature bag containing two long loaves of generic white bread blocked my exit. I flashed on the man in line before me, who was one of those dudes who talks loud and talks to everyone, not a care in the world. The woman behind me inline had a duo of tantruming toddlers, whom she was trying to soothe with platitudes, and he looked at her and said,"What's he so upset about?"
Big lipped, the kid looked at the man and said through tears "bbaaabaa Valentimes," to which the man nodded and smiled, unarmed with an answer. The boy calmed.
My heart swelled with my love of the dollar store: where else can you get batteries, white bread, brown rice, a mop, reading glasses, a pregnancy test, a statue of the virgin Mary, a figurine of Bart Simpson, and a helium balloon? Where else can you see people unlike the ones at Target?
Well, lots of places, but not for a dollar a Bart.
The point of the this story is not to tell you that I am awesome for grabbing up that bag of loaf and running it out to the kid calming, talker guy down the street who was using his walker as a shopping cart, where multiple bags full and empty flagged his ride. "Oh, yeah, " he said, smiling with a quarter row of teeth, "my bread. I was looking for that. Thanks."
For an infinite moment, that smile on that sidewalk near the corner of Nicollet and 46th in the freezing cold under that noon-thirty juicy sunshine was a succulent painting. I drank.
"Can't get too far without that!" I said and we went on our ways.
The point of the story is that it's nice to go to The Dollar Store and write about it. And feel happy as I write it. And I suppose kindness, or being neighborly or human or however you want to call it, goes a long way. On and off the page.
So you can write about a kindness exchange or The Dollar Store or anything from your day or moment where you might, however momentarily, see the glimpse of good. Er... the glimpse of life, but you know what I meant.
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