A familiar scene: Costco, late Saturday afternoon. In the fruit aisle. A dad trying not to buy the wrong box among the too-picked-over whatevers. Distracted by two adorable little girls sitting seatbelted in his cart, ages about 2 1/2 and 4.
The girls were wearing identical dresses, their blonde curls brushed and carefully done up, cute as all get-out, and they were on the edge of being bored. They were clearly well-loved kids. They were being rambunctiously cheerful, in that way that experienced parents know will turn into tears instead in an instant on the part of the littler child fairly soon now if they kept that up at that rate.
The dad could see it coming, too. He looked tired. He tried to get them to calm down and hold a little more still, clearly wishing this shopping trip were over. What they wanted, of course, was for him to stop and pay attention to them for a moment–many moments, hey, kids are kids–but his face was pleading that he had to buy these groceries and the store was closing in 15 and he just wanted to check out the apricots and actually look at them a moment first. Okay?
Out came the handknitted fingerpuppets. I apologized for butting into his space, basically, telling him I’d had four kids in six years; would they like these to play with?
His whole face changed in that instant. He was thrilled. I told him they were from a Peruvian women’s co-op. He exclaimed, “That’s so cool!” turning them over and over in his hands, marveling at the details. Fingerpuppets!
I smiled and quickly got out of their way–last I saw, he was the one still playing with them in great delight, holding them out for his daughters to see. But I came away thinking, that guy doesn’t know it, but his reaction just made it so I won’t forget to do that the next time.
Speaking of which, I need to go re-stock my purse.