Oreos

There is a woman who works at Zagara's who has some sort of developmental delay. She's lovely. Hard, hard working. One of her traits is that she always apologizes, repeatedly, even for the smallest infraction. One time, she said that she was sorry six times when she had bagged some groceries that I just wanted to carry out.

Most of the time, she is the star bagger, but today I ran across her in the cookie aisle. She was given the job of putting away items that customers did not want to purchase or had left stranded in odd places. She had a box of double-stuff strawberry Oreos (who the heck ever invented that?) and was also holding a six pack of Sunny-D. She walked right up to me and asked for help finding the right spot for the cookies. Once we found it, she said thank you several times then told me that "sometimes (she) gets lost. The store can be confusing."

I ran into her again about five minutes later. This time she was trying to find the right home for a large jug of vegetable oil. She said, as I was leaning down to find some sugar-free frosting, "Excuse me, I do not mean to get in your way." I said, "You are not in my way, buddy. Plenty of space here." And even though there was nothing funny about what I said, she smiled and said, "You make me laugh."

Nothing in this day -- a good day -- made me happier. Something about it. Making this simple woman simply happy. And her, making me simply happy too.