To The Stranger At The Grocery Checkout Counter Who Showed Me Who I Am





Morf Morford

 



© Copyright 2025 by Morf Morford



 Photo courtesy of Stockcake.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels.

At 72, I have met a lot of strangers – some friendly, some menacing, and one or two that never emerged from sleep or maybe a coma – but they were my travel, or everyday life companions for a glistening moment or two.

On the road, you never know who you will meet, or what kind of condition they are in. Or what their intentions might be.

One guy I met across New Mexico and Arizona had just been on a televised game show and he had a car full of game show swag – banners, stickers, and every kind of promotional prize or give-away he could snag.

Others told me stories of travels and lost love – or fortunes, or both.

And some told me of the love, fame and fortune waiting for them on the next horizon.

Back then, I was in my early twenties, and skinny – maybe too skinny.

One summer, at that stage in my life, three total strangers came up to me and gave me a few dollars and told me to buy something to eat.

One was a woman who was on vacation from being a nightclub dancer in Las Vegas. She bought me lunch and gave me some cash for food.

I must have looked hungry, but harmless. I did as they suggested.

But the person who had one of the most memorable impacts on my life, I do not even remotely remember.

Male or female, old or young, white or person of color, I cannot remember. And maybe it doesn’t matter.

It was a total stranger, and they will stay that way in my memory.

My wife and I were at a grocery store. It must have been a weekend.

We, and everyone else in line at the checkout had large grocery carts overflowing.

My wife did what she always does; “I forgot one thing! I’ll be right back” as she ran to the far corner of the store.

When she came back, I was talking to the person, the unnamed stranger, with the next cart in front of me.

As we walked to the car, my wife asked who I was talking to. I told her it was the person, a total stranger, next to me.

I’m not sure that I convinced her.

Her response was as concise as it was cold; “You talk to anyone, don’t you?”.

A few years later, I was teaching a writing class and one of our areas of focus was short pieces – down to six words.

Six-word memoirs to be exact.

My wife was the accidental inspiration for mine.

Some six-word memoirs are a single thought, some are a question and an answer.

Something like “Normal’s a setting on your dryer” or “Best party ever. Can’t remember anything” or “Tried men. Tried women. Found cats”.

Mine was two intersecting, complementary thoughts – both, as I mentioned, thanks to my wife’s trenchant, and not always happy, observations.

Get Normal

Sometimes I fit in and sometimes I don’t.

I know some people who are deliberate non-conformists. They parade their “independence” by mocking whatever is popular or trendy. They garner attention by making a spectacle of themselves.

Their “non-conformity” is as slavish as any fashion victim.

That is not me.

I attempt to fit in. But not very diligently.

And most of the time, I don’t really care.

I don’t love or hate whatever is everyone else’s obsession.

It is either interesting to me or it isn’t.

So when it comes to almost anything from food to music, I do what I do, with a little taste, or at least a wry observation of what others are doing.

In my wife’s eyes, I’m not normal.

I must admit that “normal” has never been a personal aspiration.

“Normal” people, after all, are not very interesting.

Sometimes, usually at my wife’s insistence, I attempt to be what she thinks of as normal.

This is usually at some family or work-related gathering.

It rarely goes well.

At family or work-related events, we may not think about it, but there is a constant unspoken assessment about what is “normal”.

From tone of voice to menu items to the suitability of swearing or preferred entertainment options, we all “read the room” pretty quickly to confirm, and conform to “what we’ve always done before”.

Strangers and nano-conversations have no such restrictions or guidelines. Or expectations.

We socially collide and, in most cases never see each other again.

There’s something beautiful, almost graceful, about this serendipitous intersection of journeys. We share a moment – and maybe an experience.

And then move on. And rarely look back.

The day I wrote this, I was standing at a pedestrian crossing at a busy intersection. A woman I had not even noticed walked up from behind me, and as she did, we heard a loud crash. There was a car collision right in front of us.

We had about a three-sentence conversation wrapped around “Did you see that?”.

And then we went our separate ways.

There’s a barren beauty in a conversation like that. It’s like those desert flowers that bloom once every five years.

Nothing to be explained, or justified, or even sometimes, understood.

My six-word memoir is like that; it presents, but explains nothing.

But it captures who I am like an improvised snapshot.

Six-words distills a life, many times far better than a longer exposition.

My six-word memoir is as succinct as it is sweeping. It captures, like a snapshot of a child in motion, the essence without the details, the face without the make-up, the eyes behind the mask, the skeleton beyond the skin.

“Talk to anyone. Can’t do normal”.

Some who study human nature insist that we only know ourselves through our reflection from those around us.

I am convinced that strangers are the best mirrors of all.

And to all the strangers I have yet to meet, or have already met in passing, all I can say is thank you, may we meet again, and I hope I can return the anonymous and serendipitous blessing.


Contact Morf
(Unless you type the author's name
in the subject line of the message
we won't know where to send it.)

Morf's story list and biography

Book Case

Home Page

The Preservation Foundation, Inc., A Nonprofit Book Publisher