So Far Away...

Doesn't anyone stay in place anymore? Suppose not, especially when a 50-something person works with 30-somethings who have never heard of Carol King. And James Taylor? Oh, yeah, wasn't he the fire and rain guy? Try not to make the mistake of seeing and understanding the world through your own eyes. It gets old. But sometimes in a very good way.

Oh, Great.

No one told me about daylight savings. But I'm glad I'll get an extra hour of sleep.

Last Night's Gift.

A Quick Scan On Punching In And Checking Out.

My father used to design grocery stores for the likes of Kroger, Winn-Dixie, Bettendorf and Handy-Andy Supermarkets.  Which meant that in high school in the early 70s, I always had a summer job “checking groceries.” I trained on what they called an “electrical decimal cash register.” No barcode scanners to translate binary codes. No lighted display to tell me how much change I should make. No temperamental self-checkouts.

Instead, it was my job to press down the appropriate cash-register keys to enter in prices, count correct change and bag groceries if “sackers” were outside retrieving hurled shopping carts. Since I didn’t use a barcode scanner, my customers hardly spoke to me. Instead, they were fixated on my every keypunch. When I handed them their receipts, they x-ray-visioned them all the way out to their cars.

So last weekend I had to smile while paying for my purchases at a local Sarasota grocery store. I had accumulated a small but respectful mountain of fruits and vegetables inside my squeaky-wheeled basket. I placed them in order of hardest to softest on the conveyor belt to encourage proper packing.

The young cashier went to work, sliding my canned and bottled items over the scanner like they were greased potatoes. But when she got to my nectarines, my pears, my Granny Smiths and two kiwis, she sighed and apologized.

“I wish all these barcodes would work, “ she complained, squinting at the labels and punching in the numbers with French-manicured nails.

Well, I couldn’t help myself. I told her that as a young cashier back in the 70s, I had to memorize the code for each fruit and vegetable, weigh each one on jiggly scales and punch in each code.

I said that back in those days, you had to know the difference between a McIntosh and a Winesap. Green bananas and firm plantains. A Dixie Giant and a hefty beefsteak.

The girl almost dropped my kiwis.

But at least she had the wherewithal to remind me to enter my seven-digit zip code and push credit or debit. I swiped my credit card and went along my merry way. 

Hope For "Hope" The Abused Dog.

"I love not man less, but nature more." 

Heartbreaking, heartwarming.  No words to add.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/07/11/4094109/abused-parker-county-dog-is-making.html

In America, It's 4th of July Somewhere.

Why A Duck Is Better Than A Pedometer Reading

Astral flights around a mall aren't the most interesting, except when I spot a 50-something jogger huff and puff and then decide to park it in front of the J.C. Penney. She was messing with her i-Pod, her Blackberry, her pedometer and her shoestrings -- looking totally frustrated until she saw a duck approach.

You see, this J.C. Penney store and its striped concrete skirt bumped up to a retention pond populated by ducks and a few errant seagulls. Being only a whisker past 7 a.m., there were no shoppers around -- just some loud belly-rumblings from webbed-feet quackers hoping for tidbits of French toast or French fries.

This particular duck was not to be denied. It seemed to cock its head when it heard Eddie Vedder's voice float out of the i-Pod's earbuds...something about Society....and then Alison Krauss singing Down To The River To Pray (river, retention pond -- I don't think it'd matter much to Alison). 

Like I said, the jogger just sort of parked it right there on the grass, folded her arms around her knees and stared back at the duck. I heard her thinking about how she'd bring some bread next time as a way of saying thanks -- thanks because a moment like this was way better than a pedometer reading could ever be.

But at least she snapped a picture. It will never make it on the cover of National Geographic. But she left with a memory of the morning.