I was at the grocery store yesterday — my stock of tea at the office is much diminished and needed replenishment — and, like usual, I asked the cashier, an older woman, probably in her sixties, how she was. (When I say, “like usual,” it’s a habit born of years of retail. I try not to be a grumpy and disinterested customer, especially this time of year.)<\/p>\n
“I’m tired,” she said, as she started scanning my items. (Besides two boxes of tea, there were antacid tablets, a bottle of diet cream soda, and a jug of windshield wiper fluid.)<\/p>\n
I nodded. “I can understand that,” I said.<\/p>\n
She looked at me. “I’m blessed.”<\/p>\n
Wait. What did she say? What did I hear?<\/p>\n
Some confusion clearly played on my face. “Wait, did you say ‘blessed’? That you’re blessed?”<\/p>\n
“Yes,” she said. “I’m blessed.”<\/p>\n
I had absolutely no idea to respond to that. I nodded, smiled, and said, quickly. “Yes, yes, blessed. Yes, that’s a good thing. I’m glad.”<\/p>\n
She wished me a good evening when the transaction was finished. I wished her a Merry Christmas. Those exact words, despite my well-known reputation for being a heathen.<\/p>\n
I still have no idea how to respond to “I’m blessed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was at the grocery store yesterday — my stock of tea at the office is much diminished and needed replenishment — and, like usual, I asked the cashier, an older woman, probably in her sixties, how she was. (When I say, “like usual,” it’s a habit born of years of retail. I try notContinue reading “A Grocery Store Encounter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}