“How’s your day been?” drawled the young whipper-snapper behind the checkout when Scotto and I were picking up dinner ingredients from our local Coles supermarket on Saturday.
He sounded a bit burned-out and bored out of his brain.
“It’s been okay,” I chirped. “How was your trip down to Sydney to make that video clip last weekend?”
His curly head snapped up and a grin spread over his face. “It was great!” he raved, eyes lighting up.
“Mitchell’s just been down filming a new indy band’s video clip,” I nodded to Scotto, putting him in the picture.
Mitchell proceeded to wax lyrical for the next five minutes while he put our groceries through the scanner. We heard all about his fantastic weekend and how he’d been commissioned to film another gig in a month’s time.
“How do you know him?” quizzed a puzzled Scotto as we left the shop.
“From the supermarket,” I replied. “I know all of the check-out operators and what they get up to in their spare time.”
It’s true. There’s Old Helen, who’s been waiting eighteen months to have her shed built because the initial contractor went bankrupt. She has a son who left the teaching profession because of the bureaucratic bullsh#t we have to put up with and another son who gives his dog a full-on birthday party every year with written invitations and everything.
Old Helen has two dogs of her own; Maltese/Shit tzus (which I guess are called Shit-Teezers?). They sleep in her bed and her husband falls asleep in front of the television most nights.
Then… there’s Neil the budding drama student, Chris who loves restoring old cars and wants to be a mechanical engineer when he finishes grade twelve, Stephan the gay hairdresser who’s in between jobs, Drew the second year medical student whose parents are in the army and Sophie who shrewdly analyses the contents of my shopping trolley every day and speculates about what I’m cooking for dinner that night... plus about ten more of them.
“You need to get a life, Pinky!” I hear you rolling your eyes. “Why do you spend so much time talking to shop assistants?”
Well… firstly it’s because I happen to be very curious about people and secondly, because I hope other people are just as friendly to my kids in their part time jobs.
Finally, I make the effort because you just never know…
One day one of those kids might be giving me an endoscopy or something worse.
Then… there’s Neil the budding drama student, Chris who loves restoring old cars and wants to be a mechanical engineer when he finishes grade twelve, Stephan the gay hairdresser who’s in between jobs, Drew the second year medical student whose parents are in the army and Sophie who shrewdly analyses the contents of my shopping trolley every day and speculates about what I’m cooking for dinner that night... plus about ten more of them.
“You need to get a life, Pinky!” I hear you rolling your eyes. “Why do you spend so much time talking to shop assistants?”
Well… firstly it’s because I happen to be very curious about people and secondly, because I hope other people are just as friendly to my kids in their part time jobs.
Finally, I make the effort because you just never know…
One day one of those kids might be giving me an endoscopy or something worse.
Image credit: www.thedailycute.com