The World Is Strange, and We Live in It, a grocery store misunderstanding.
- gmaylone
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
By Glen Maylone
I walked into the Giant grocery store yesterday to grab a few things.
It was packed — people picking over produce, carts, kids, the whole human circus — and by the time I finally made it to check out, I was already done with the world.
The cashier was a thin Black woman, maybe in her 40s, bagging items with the kind of caution normally reserved for an archeological dig.
One item per bag.
Every bag treated like a luxury suite.
I smiled and said, “You can fill them up.”
She nodded without looking at me.
“Okay. It’s your food.”
Fair point.
A few bags later, she put my bananas into their own private bungalow and then reached for a fresh bag for the apples.
I said, “You can toss the apples in with the bananas — they’re fruit friends.”
She froze.
Turned her head slowly.
“You gonna bruise them bananas,” she warned.
“I take full responsibility,” I said. “I absolve you of any banana-related harm.”
And that… was where things took a turn.
She stops ringing.
Looks at me with this narrowed, suspicious expression.
“You gonna WHAT me?”“Ab— abso— abs something me?”
She frowns.
“That sounds nasty.”
She says the last part loud enough so at least half the line hears it, and goes silent, like everyone’s waiting to see if this becomes a grocery store felony.
I was halfway into the process of digging my debit card out, and before I can even gather my wits, or open my mouth to respond.
The woman behind me — small Hispanic lady, thick accent, two kids climbing all over her cart — swoops in like a guardian angel sent by the produce aisle.
“That means he forgives you, chica,” she says.
A quick exchange of looks between the two of them and — just like that — case closed.
Linguistic rescue complete.
The cashier looks at me for just a second, blinks.
“Oh. Well, that’s good. Lord knows I need forgiveness.”
And without missing a beat, she snaps right back into her routine.
“Do you have your Giant Saver card, sweetie, or just enter your number on the little pad there.”
“In one fluid movement, like a seasoned pro, she handed me my receipt, said thank you for shopping at Giant, and was already ringing up the person behind me.”
I was mentally dismissed by the cashier.
I paid.
Took my potentially bruised but spiritually cleansed bananas.
Walked out into the cold air thinking:
This is why I leave the house as little as possible.
On the drive home, though, I found myself musing over it — how a 40-something American-born woman didn’t know a simple word like absolve, yet the woman behind me, juggling kids and groceries and life, jumped in to translate it with perfect clarity.
The lightning-fast shift from:
focused cashier→ suspicious cashier→ briefly scandalized cashier→ absolved and cheerful cashier
…was something to behold.
A tiny human moment.
A flicker of misunderstanding.
A stranger stepping in with kindness.
And then everyone moving on with their day.
Nothing earth-shattering.
But it stuck with me — the way small things often do.
Maybe because it reminded me how delicate language can be.
How quickly we misread each other.
How often these otherwise un-noteworthy moments happen.
How strangers save us from awkwardness without even realizing it.
Or maybe it’s just because I really wanted those apples and bananas to get along.
Either way, checkout lane seven left an impression.
And the bananas? Well… they ended up bruised.
I wrote this thinking how truly blessed I am!
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