I was working in the Floral department of the local grocery store, rushing to keep pace with my to-do list, when an older customer with a worn face came up to the counter and requested one red rose.
I directed him to the cooler and grabbed three roses for him choose from.
“Which one’s the best?” he inquired.
“Well, they all came from the same batch.” I quickly examined each bud. “This one is the biggest,” I said, gesturing to the rose on the left. “This one has the most closed bud, so it’ll probably last the longest,” I predicted of the one on the right. He chose the one in the middle that I hadn’t commented on.
“Guess who this is for!”
The man was a stranger to me. I didn’t know if he was married or what his relationship status was. “Girlfriend” didn’t seem like the appropriate term for someone his age.
“Your…lady love?” was the term I finally generated.
He looked at me pathetically, like he couldn’t believe how dense I was.
It was Easter, so I guessed, “Jesus?”
He gave me another look that said, Boy, are you an idiot. “It’s for my mother.”
Well, how was I supposed to know that?
“Guess how old she is!” I didn’t know where to begin, and in my stalling, he answered by saying, “I’m 75, and she’s 27 years older than me.”
“Wow! Good for her!”
“She’s dead.”
First of all, if the person isn’t alive anymore, can you assign them an age? Secondly, did he really expect me to answer his question with “I think she’s dead”?
“Her name was Rosetta- her first name was Rose; her middle name was Etta. Guess what my daughter’s name is!”
“Rose!”
His daughter’s name is Ivy. Again, how in the world would I have guessed that?
“I was one of ten children.” He pulled out his phone and brought up a black and white photo of a group of children in winter coats and mittens surrounding a snowman. “That’s me; I’m 14. And that’s Bobby; he’s 13. That’s Susan- she’s 10…”
Oh, God. Normally, I might enjoy hearing a personal story, but not when I’m behind at work.
He continued through a synopsis of his life, including a dog-eared story about how, decades ago, his wife left him for a 90-year-old. Interestingly, at this job, I’ve encountered a few other men [curiously, all wearing pieces of clothing that proclaimed them to be Veterans] who had been left by their wives who shared the information as if they were bragging. You could tell by the way they had the story edited to a soundbite that they whipped it out of their pocket as easily and often as a credit card.
“People ask me how I’m doing, and I say, ‘Not bad for an old man.'” He did a little hop-skip-jump in place on marionette-like legs, one knee popping up by his waist, then the other. It looked like a move that a leprechaun character might make during his opening number in a musical. ‘Didja see that?’ He demonstrated the move again. It came to mind that my own dad is also 75, and I couldn’t imagine a scenario that would prompt him to jump like a cartoon character during normal conversation, especially in front of a stranger in public.
After lots of closing statements (“Have a good day!”, “It was nice talking with you!”, “Stay safe!”), he left, and I could get back to work. I checked on another customer in the department, then gathered supplies to arrange flowers in vases.
“She died on Easter!” Suddenly he was in front of me again. I jumped, not having seen him approach.
“You think history doesn’t repeat itself?!” he demanded. I hadn’t said anything on the topic.
He plowed into the details of his parents’ lives: their “illegal” marriage, his father in his twenties, his mother only seventeen; the exact years his father was in the military; how old his father lived to be. His mother was 27 when he was born. “Guess how old I was when my daughter was born!”
I wasn’t a big fan of his guessing games, so I didn’t even attempt to answer.
“Twenty-seven!”
Oh, sure- the one time I could have guessed the answer!
The part of the conversation that stuck with me, besides a general surreal feeling and an observation that the coronavirus lockdown might be taking a toll on people’s sanity, was the description the customer had locked himself into. Why would you want every stranger you met to know you as The Guy Whose Wife Left Him for a 90-Year-Old? The Guy Who Had Something Bad Happen (or, Caused Something Bad to Happen) Decades Ago and Never Moved On. And, more importantly, why would you want to BE that guy?
It was a good reminder not to get trapped by our own thinking. How many of us go around saying, “I’m terrible at math,” or “Patience is not my forte,” or “Trust me- you wouldn’t want to hear me sing!”? The good news is, we can step out of that box at any time. Let it rot in the rain.