So I was at Walmart this morning, checking out the clearance rack for cheap shirts (because you can’t be a cut-rate Cary Grant if you’re paying a full ten dollars for a dress shirt at Walmart). As I got back into my truck with my purchases, I saw an older man, an older man not bent but hunched a bit walking slowly, not with a shuffle but with the short steps of age, eating a candy bar, and I smiled.
Because it’s a candy bar, and it’s a simple treat in the world where young, healthy (and slightly older, healthier) zealots want to purge everyone’s diets of sugars, gluten, and processed-whatever-this-week, and this man has bought a candy bar and he couldn’t wait until he got to his car or his home to enjoy it. Like a kid, he opened it right up and enjoyed a little bit of calorie-laden joy at 8:30 in the morning.
You know what? He’s probably earned seventy-five cents worth of nougat in his life. And he’s not afraid to take it, and he’s not afraid of anyone seeing him take a bit of a preemptory pleasure before the rest of his day begins.
And that made me smile.
(Yes, I know, it’s entirely possible that his one sack was full of bottles of whiskey and candy bars he bought with government assistance money. But come on, I’m trying to break my usual gloominess with a focus on life’s little pleasures, and just for once I’d like to think someone in the year 4bo earned it.)
FWIW, I’ve found good deals at Target ($2.50 shirts and shorts!) and at Sears (scored a nice sweater marked all the way down to $10).
Inspired by your post, I stopped by the local Walmart on the way home today. I’m obviously getting better at this, because I found the $5 and $7 racks *too expensive*.