The Faces of Love

Those who know me are aware of the haunting I'll do from time to time at the local Good Will store and it's cousin shops. Today, I just decided it'd been long enough since my last skitter through and the little one and I decided to take the stroller through the sacred second-hand gallery of chance.

I pick up a Blue's Clues VHS and head to the front to pay. No major treasure score today.

The wheelchair-bound woman working the register is about my age, plump as a ripe tomato. She casually refers to her price sheet, her finger trailing down its laminated length, scanning for "Kid's Videos" which turn out to be $1.48 each. She pokes two buttons on the cash register as a white-bearded black man interrupts the transaction.

"Shhhckewwzmee," he begins. Working his lips best he can, he utters an intelligible but earnest question of the cashier. An edge of impatience cuts the room when she answers, "What?" in the same tone a 4th grader might respond to a wise guy on the playground.

The man adjusts the bill on his cap as if to cue himself to repeat his question in a different language. He offers the words more slowly and deliberately this time, "I-sh wanna g'no fy'c'n take dad shhhckooder ow side fo m'wive come in."

He wanted to drive the motorized scooter outside to the car in the parking lot for his wife. The cashier was clearly uneasy but gave him the, "Yyeah, I guess that's ok." As he mounted the steed, our friendly cashier mumbled to me, with a sentencing eye roll, that she thought he must be drunk.

The old man fired up the scooter and, as quickly as he'd entered, he was on his way out--full scooter throttle. He was making good time toward the door.

"BAM!" The sticker on the door read, "Pull". He backed it up.

Another customer coming in tried to help him out by holding the door open, which he proceeded to lurch toward, make contact with, and become briefly wedged within. I left the store moments later through the "Push" set of doors on the other side, as he and other customer freed the scooter from the doorway and the rumpled rug. Almost to my car, the old man bee-lined past me in the parking lot driving toward his wife who was waiting next to their car a few rows back.

His wife could not have weighed one cookie less than 400 pounds.

He dismounted the scooter and looked on as she worked herself into a seated position on the cart. He walked with her as the scooter's motor whined with strained gears, creeping across the parking lot, its tail end scraping the asphalt. About half-way back to the store, I hear him belt out, "Naw, muss be juss runnin oudda chargin."

The baby was all buckled into her Lazy-Boy, and I was wrangling the 'instant collapse' lever on her stroller behind the car when I noticed that the 'Little Scooter That Could' just wouldn't. The slight angle of the handicap ramp from the parking lot to the sidewalk was too much for the brave little scooter. He just done gave it all he had. Now, Husband wasn't about to leave his girl stranded. The old guy bowed up and put both hands on the back of her seat and started pushing his gal up the ramp--and by golly, I saw the last few moments of his love for her in my side-view mirror as he opened the door for her to the Good Will store. I was proud of him.