Checking Out

While waiting in line at a grocery store checkout tonight I had an humorous exchange. Ahead of me in the line was an older couple and a second cashier stood behind them talking with them and the on-duty cashier, carrying on a lively conversation about the woman’s upcoming (or it may have been just past) birthday. As the couple was finishing up their transaction the woman turned to me and, in an excited voice said, “Oh my! What gorgeous red hair! Do you dye it?”
“No, it’s natural,” I replied.
“My first boyfriend had red hair,” she exclaimed, her voice rising with glee, or romantic nostalgia, “It always takes me…”
The cashiers and I had quite a good laugh as she wistfully trailed off into some odd sort of passion. She commented that I must be having a party, since I was buying a couple big bags of Crispy Minis and shared mock-admonishing tsk, tsks before she moved off with her husband. Leaving the store, I smiled at the lady as I passed, she waiting with a cart for her husband to bring the car near the exit.