You Can Meet Interesting People While Running Errands
I had to make sure I went to the dry cleaner yesterday. C had two shirts and two pairs of pants there. I had already forgotten to pick them up twice. I needed to get home to do some laundry and maybe even pick up the house a little. Picking up these clothes would not take long.
So I thought......
There was a woman tending the store. She was short, a bit stout with well groomed white hair and glasses. She was wearing a colourful green outfit. I gave her C's name. She found the order and I paid for it. She told me to have a nice day. I said that I'd planned to. I had just finished filling in for my boss while he was at a meeting and was on my way home.
She told me that she was retired, but worked at the dry cleaner because she liked to stay active. She told me, very firmly, that one must stay active or decay will set in. I told her that my uncle feels the same way. He retired from Northwest Airlines (before it became Delta). He found a job that has turned out to be about full time, but he gets to pick his hours.
It turns out that she was a travel agent for many years. She enjoyed her job very much, but felt she had left at just the right time. Now she was taking classes in creative writing. She said that she found it challenging as she had studied journalism and was used to writing the facts only. Descriptive language was very new to her.
By this time I had moved away form the door and had set my bag back on the counter. I moved the clothes I was carrying to a more comfortable position. This chat was taking longer than I had planned. I didn't mind though. It was interesting.
I told her I had read somewhere that it was important to keep learning new things. Since I'd married into a family of musicians,I told her I was teaching myself to play hammer dulcimer and lap harp. She smiled.
We launched into all kinds of subjects. She told me she had heard in the news that someone had figured out how to print out someone else's boarding pass and was flying around the United States with multiple IDs and credit cards before getting caught. She's very critical of the airline security systems.
Somehow we started talking about credit cards and how credit card applications used to be sent out all the time. Both of us agreed that it was best to keep just a few cards that you would actually need and to pay off the balance in full each month. She admitted that she didn't used to do that when she was younger. She liked to buy clothes and as a travel agent she always wore suits and heels. Finally her accountant told her she needed to pay off all her bills and to never run a balance again. She did.
She asked me what my job was. I told her. She launched into several stories of pharmacists she knew when she was younger. They were very well respected and took good care of their customers. One of them is still working. I may have talked to him. I told her that I preferred to work in retail and working in hospital was just too boring. I couldn't see spending the better part of my life in a basement counting pills.
She enjoys meeting people too. One of the people she met was a women who wrote scripts with Cedric Adams. I told her the name was not familiar to me. He was a famous journalist in the Twin Cities. He wrote a daily newspaper column and did the news on the WCCO radio station.
At one point in the conversation, she told me that she was 80 years old. I was amazed. She didn't look 80. I thought she was in her late sixties or early seventies. If I'm lucky enough to reach that age, I want to be like her.
Another customer came in and our conversation came to an end. As I was gathering my things to leave the store, she told me that her name was Ida. I turned to her and told her that I was Sophie and that I hoped she would have a good weekend.
That's the fun part of running errands. You never know what interesting people you could meet while you are out.
So I thought......
There was a woman tending the store. She was short, a bit stout with well groomed white hair and glasses. She was wearing a colourful green outfit. I gave her C's name. She found the order and I paid for it. She told me to have a nice day. I said that I'd planned to. I had just finished filling in for my boss while he was at a meeting and was on my way home.
She told me that she was retired, but worked at the dry cleaner because she liked to stay active. She told me, very firmly, that one must stay active or decay will set in. I told her that my uncle feels the same way. He retired from Northwest Airlines (before it became Delta). He found a job that has turned out to be about full time, but he gets to pick his hours.
It turns out that she was a travel agent for many years. She enjoyed her job very much, but felt she had left at just the right time. Now she was taking classes in creative writing. She said that she found it challenging as she had studied journalism and was used to writing the facts only. Descriptive language was very new to her.
By this time I had moved away form the door and had set my bag back on the counter. I moved the clothes I was carrying to a more comfortable position. This chat was taking longer than I had planned. I didn't mind though. It was interesting.
I told her I had read somewhere that it was important to keep learning new things. Since I'd married into a family of musicians,I told her I was teaching myself to play hammer dulcimer and lap harp. She smiled.
We launched into all kinds of subjects. She told me she had heard in the news that someone had figured out how to print out someone else's boarding pass and was flying around the United States with multiple IDs and credit cards before getting caught. She's very critical of the airline security systems.
Somehow we started talking about credit cards and how credit card applications used to be sent out all the time. Both of us agreed that it was best to keep just a few cards that you would actually need and to pay off the balance in full each month. She admitted that she didn't used to do that when she was younger. She liked to buy clothes and as a travel agent she always wore suits and heels. Finally her accountant told her she needed to pay off all her bills and to never run a balance again. She did.
She asked me what my job was. I told her. She launched into several stories of pharmacists she knew when she was younger. They were very well respected and took good care of their customers. One of them is still working. I may have talked to him. I told her that I preferred to work in retail and working in hospital was just too boring. I couldn't see spending the better part of my life in a basement counting pills.
She enjoys meeting people too. One of the people she met was a women who wrote scripts with Cedric Adams. I told her the name was not familiar to me. He was a famous journalist in the Twin Cities. He wrote a daily newspaper column and did the news on the WCCO radio station.
At one point in the conversation, she told me that she was 80 years old. I was amazed. She didn't look 80. I thought she was in her late sixties or early seventies. If I'm lucky enough to reach that age, I want to be like her.
Another customer came in and our conversation came to an end. As I was gathering my things to leave the store, she told me that her name was Ida. I turned to her and told her that I was Sophie and that I hoped she would have a good weekend.
That's the fun part of running errands. You never know what interesting people you could meet while you are out.
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