Shoe Shopping

I took Katie shoe shopping for Easter. Her Nana and Buddy sent her the most fabulous green and white dress with a cardigan, which she has already tried on half a dozen times and pranced around the house in while twirling and posing for all to admire. So, naturally, she needed some new shoes to go with it.

We go to Marshall's and quickly find THE most divine silver sandals, all bling-d out. The unfortunate part was we had to stand in the checkout line for almost 15 minutes. The fortunate part of that was that I brushed up on my conversational Farsi and French thanks to our fellow checker-outers. Yes, thanks to my many international neighbors I can now at least recognize the spoken language of Farsi; many many moons ago I was conversant in French which has apparently (surprisingly) not totally left me.

Once we finnnnnaaalllly make it to the next available cashier, the older aged woman looks up and the pleasant surprise and relief is immediately apparent on her face: two people who look like her, not blabbing away on a cell phone or bluetooth, pants not hanging off our butts, and English is our native language. I know - this smacks of discrimination, narcissism, racism, and whatever else-ism. But I (1) had had enough time in line to observe the rudeness of my fellow checker-outers, the disdain with which they treated the cashiers (as if they were an interruption to the business that required their immediate attention surely on the scale of a national emergency), and the general air of incivility and entitlement they carried around proudly; and (2) had also had enough time in line (this time and from prior visits) to pick up on this particular cashier's reticence when faced with people who are just plain RUDE AND INCONSIDERATE.

Katie plops her shoes down on the counter, still out-of-the-box, as she's been carrying them around the store since deciding they were "the ones." The cashier says,

"Oooooh so pretty! Shoes with diamonds!"

I literally opened my mouth to respond with something like, "Yeah, I never had shoes with diamonds..." or something equally witty. But before I could, Katie blurted out,

"My mom didn't have air-conditioning in her school when she was my age."

?!??

Long, awkward pause....me looking at Katie, back at cashier, back to Katie...

The cashier looks Katie in the eye and says with a smile,

"Neither did I!"

Katie just smiles back at her, looking pleased the lady picked up on this random thread of conversation.

She continued, "And you know what? We didn't have it in our house either!"

And so we finished paying for the shoes, leaving with the cashier's countenance dramatically altered after her conversation with my daughter about times long-gone, and how the world has changed with such simple things like air-conditioning and cell phones.

Of course I had talked with Katie at some time about spending my elementary school years sweltering in the Arkansas heat, because otherwise she would not know this of course. I do not, however, remember this conversation, and feel certain it was not recent. But somehow Katie felt this tenous connection with this lady enough to share this little random detail with her, or maybe it was just "youthful ignorance?" Instead of being embarrased - which I was for the briefest second at first - I left the store feeling proud of my daughter for being so articulate, innocent, and engaging. I like to think we made the night a little better for that lady.

Oh, and the shoes look amazing on Katie.