The sensors start to beep, and Linda finally puts the gear shift in park, having maneuvered her behemoth of a truck successfully into the tiny parking stall. We are surprisingly close to the building, given the hundreds of cars in the parking lot. I don't particularly appreciate shopping at Costco; however, Linda promised me we only needed a couple of items, and we'd be in and out in no time.
The warehouse is packed with pre-holiday shoppers as I push our oversized cart through the aisles of overstuffed shelving toward the rear of the store. I groan, looking at the size of the packaging, knowing that almost everything we buy thinking we are getting a good deal purchasing bulk, we will end up throwing part of it away because the two of us can't consume the pounds of chicken, salad, or salmon in one sitting.
The only exception to the rule is bacon, and Linda gets two double-sized packages of the thickly sliced pork delight out of the refrigerated case, probably holding a hundred or more pounds of the stuff. As I stroll down the central aisle, Linda is weaving through the final rows. She will pick up a couple of items and toss them in the cart, and by the time I walk to the next aisle, she'll be there with a couple more things.
In my zombie-like state of attention, I glance down one of the lanes and am greeted with a smile. It is a face I've known for over 40 years, not well, mind you, a passing acquaintance at best, but a face that now matches the wrinkles and thinning hairline I pictured in my youth.
Hello, Mr. Smith (not his real name), I say, not fully expecting him to respond in kind; however, he surprises me with a hello, Mr. Thompson copying my formal greeting. Merry Christmas to you, and we exchanged pleasantries for a minute before he asked what year I had graduated from school. 1973? 74? He asks; 1976, I say, surprised by the clarity of his mind. Ah yes, classmates with Cindy (who was valedictorian), and he rattles off a few more names. I mention a couple of my friends, and he smiles, nodding. A good group of kids is his response.
Harold, or Huck as we call him, was the English teacher at the local high school. Huck fit his Huckleberry Finn personality and "ah shucks" vocabulary; however, underneath the mental bib overalls resides a solid mental power and strength of character that would win him the Mayorial candidacy several terms in a row.
Linda wanders around the corner, no doubt giving up on me at the next aisle when I wasn't there, I introduced her, and we chatted another moment before saying our goodbyes. "Is he the one that threw erasers at you?" Linda enquired as we turned the corner, and I smiled as the memories returned. "That's him," I said. Huck's arm and accuracy were legendary at returning a wandering student's mind or mouth to attention with flying foam rubber erasers that he always had ready access to at the chalkboard. Unfortunately, I learned little from him (my fault, not his), and grammar and spelling would be the discomfort of my life until technology came to the rescue in the form of spellcheck and Grammarly-type products.
My friends and I have laughed over the years as we realized our high school teachers were barely out of college (for the most part) and were young men and women just starting careers of their own and not the "old" people we thought them to be from our sixteen-year-old perspective. I glance back at the eighty-year-old former teacher in the aisle and silently thank teachers and people of character who have engaged me along my journey through life.