I must offer an apology to the lowly minimum wage clerk I encountered last week at the Häagen-Dazs shop at Pearl Street Mall.
For those who do not know Boulder, Colorado, Pearl Street is a magical place. It used to be just a street, but cars are no longer allowed. It is a mall. I have experienced magic when we go there. We park our car on Walnut Street, which is regular pavement, and then walk a block to Pearl. The color of the pavement changes from gray to a pinkish hue, and bricks replace asphalt. I lift my foot from pavement to brick and back, and chant “prices go up, prices go down.”
It works. It is magic.
Anyway, I was looking for something sweet, actually wasting a little time before heading off to endure the grandparently torture of a baseball game among eight-year-old boys. (The best pitchers get hit hardest, as they actually land the ball in the vicinity of the plate.) I found myself on Pearl Street Mall. The Häagen-Dazs store beckoned, and I entered. Right away I was offered a taste of the new almond something-or-other flavor ice cream. It was OK, and the array of flavors was confusing, so I said just give me a little cup of that to go.
And I got a little three ounce up and headed to the register, and the clerk said $5.40 please, and I blurted out “Holy shit!” It just came out, and I was embarrassed, but added “I won’t be darkening these doors again.”
Which is true. But I must apologize to the poor clerk at the Häagen-Dazs store whose job it is to announce to customers that they’ve been seduced by forty-cent ice cream in a $5.00 cup. I imagine that goes on all day, though others probably have an expanded vocabularies and can put it better than me. But she did not flinch as the “holy shit!” left my lips, and I suspect under the veneer she learned to put forward in her two-day training seminar she thought to herself “Got that right.”
Piece of Mindful 