Monday Musings

I have had a reasonably quiet Monday thus far.

My daily routine included doing our shopping, a duty that has fallen into my lap with all the subtlety of a crazed beagle. Fortunately, it is a duty I actually like as I have done shopping for my family mostly on my own since 1962, when I was 17. Now, due to the vicissitudes of fate and the arthritic genes in my DNA, I have to use the Amigo with the shopping basket to get around the big stores, most of which seem to be the size of Central Park in New York City.

Now, some of the little buggies move about as fast as I can walk on my painful knee/ankle days. That is always a treat as everyone passes you. I once heard a child tell her mom that the 'little scooter looks older than the old guy (yours truly) driving it'. I just smiled thinking of the squirrel scene in Willie Wonka'. Today I got the fast one. I mean the little sucker really whips along. That was fun. Most of the other shoppers are really pretty nice about it too, offering to get something off a shelf for me and the like. It just is nice to see there are times when the social identifiers of class, race, gender and whose Big Imaginary Friend is the best, fall away with a pleasant 'let me grab that for you.'

The best moment came when an old gent pulled up beside me in another Amigo. I smiled, and he grinned and said "Wanna drag?" It was a good moment of shared humor, in the frozen food aisle.

So my Monday has been quiet, one of those days when the gentle boredom of 'not much going on' is the perfect thing.

It is even a gift at times.

Tim