Take It Where You Can Get It

(From a Hallmark card)

There's a Stop & Shop less than half a mile from my house. It's not one of those humongous new Super Stop & Shop grocery stores that sell everything from sushi to beach toys; it's old and small. It's also, I'm sorry to say, a disgusting little store.

I don't say that lightly. I'm sure the manager does his very best with what he's got (you might call it a "staff" infection), but the sorry truth is that the store is dirty, the produce stinks, and, more times than not, the dairy products are expired.

The other sorry truth is that I shop there almost every day (along with Captain Underpants, I might add).

Why, you ask? Well, for starters, it's too convenient not to. And then, there's my bagger lady friend.

She's probably in her mid-thirties, although one can never be quite sure. She has a short, haphazard haircut that's always slightly awry, like she slept on it when it was wet. She's neither fat nor thin, but her height makes her an imposing presence at the end of the check-out line.

Perhaps the most striking thing about her is the way she stares right through you, not blinking or turning away. It's as if she's studying your features.

So last year, when she said "You're pretty" to me after bagging my groceries, I have to admit, I felt great. I probably whistled my pretty self all the way home.

She might be a mentally challenged bagger at the grossest Stop & Shop in Connecticut, but, I thought, she spoke her truth as she saw it. The compliment was mine for the taking, and I snatched it.

The second compliment was a long time in coming, but I really can't say I've deserved one. Most of the time I appear in Stinky Stop & Shop (as I call it) wearing sweaty tennis clothes and scant traces of make-up.

Yesterday was different, though. While she overloaded a plastic bag with about 20 cans of cat food, she turned my way and said, "You look pretty."

This was my reward for enduring nearly a year of wilted lettuce and moldy sour cream. This was why I shopped at a place swarming with colorful characters and mutant teens.

And this is why I'll keep going back for more.